


Monster

by NightMuse



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Andrew Minyard POV, I usually cry when I write these and then have a cup of tea with satan, M/M, Slow updates sometimes I am so sorry, Spoilers, The King's Men from Andrew's POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-05-31 02:12:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 44,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6451381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightMuse/pseuds/NightMuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look inside Andrew's head throughout The King's Men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Return

Andrew's pale hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat as he hung his head over the the toilet, his face resting gingerly on his arm while he waited for the next round of dry heaving to send him coughing up bile and bits of dried blood. He'd emptied his stomach an hour ago, but the nausea caused by the brutal withdrawal made his stomach roil miserably anyway. It was all he could do to remind himself that he had wanted this. He was ready to be able to feel again, even if all he felt was pain.

In his head, he traced his fingers over Neil's scars and let Neil's words ring in his ears. A quiet mind was something Andrew had never had the privilege of knowing, but listening to Neil ask for his trust was enough to dampen the ever present screams that resided in his head enough that he could remember why he was here, which was almost a curse more than it was a blessing. He wanted to hate Neil for getting him into that house, but even his own twisted logic allowed him to see that Neil would have never suggested it if he had known everything. A mirthless laugh escaped him just before the next round of heaves sent black spots over his vision.

His only true regret throughout the entire thing was that he hadn't had the pleasure of killing Drake himself. He'd spent so much time fantasizing about it, but in the end when he'd tried to fight back Drake had bested him . . . again. Yet, there was still a sick satisfaction Andrew held in remembering the way the racquet had sounded as it shattered that bastard's skull. A quick death had been too good for him and Aaron was too good for murder. Anger would forever stir inside of Andrew because even though Drake had never gotten the chance to lay his nasty hands on Aaron, he had still tainted him in a way that would never come clean. Andrew knew that Aaron would carry the stain of Drake's death with him forever, and that there was nothing he could do to take that pain from him. After everything he'd done to protect his family he had failed anyway. His fist collided with the cold tile of the bathroom floor and pain ricocheted up his arm. Neil's voice echoed in his head again.

 _"You could have destroyed your hand with a stunt like that."_   Despite the pain, and the fact that his drugs were out of his system enough to wipe the manic smile from his lips, he smiled then and it was menacing.

Remembering everything truly was nothing but a curse. It allowed for hindsight, but warning signs were only as good as the disaster they prevented. Andrew had destroyed the room more than once remembering how suspicious it had been that Maria and Luther refused to see their own son without his and Aaron's presence. However, he did thank the stars that Nicky hadn't gone alone, because God only knew what Drake would have done to him instead. 

Remembering everything also allowed him to replay the moments that mattered. At the time he'd been too medicated to care, but he would always remember the way his name sounded on Neil's tongue as he wrapped the sheet around his shoulders and that it had been the only thing keeping him from losing what was left of his already shattered mind. He remembered the way Neil's hands shook as they held that bloody sheet, because Neil had known that Andrew would never want the rest of the group to see him like that. Neil's grip, holding him up when he'd been too dizzy to sit, and his gentle guidance that helped him lean so that he wouldn't choke on his own bile. His understanding when all Andrew needed to see was Aaron to know that he was okay after he'd seen all of that blood. Aaron's face as he realized what had happened, and the way he had tried to call his name. Andrew had thought that if there had ever been a time to bring his brother back to his side, to make him understand, that moment would have been it. But his mind had been pure static with the concussion he'd received from the bottle Drake had hit him with after Andrew had raked his nails down his face, that he'd been unable to use it. He also remembered Neil's face when Andrew had told him that it had all been his fault in the driveway and the way Neil looked like his entire world had bottomed out and the guilt that had pierced through his thick veil of indifference to stab him in the chest when he'd seen it. He remembered the rest of them as well, but Neil and Aaron in those moments had been his anchors to the world and he prayed that he was remembering wrong, because Neil wasn't something he could have forever and Aaron was something he was losing. He knew it.

At least now he didn't have to act. There was no reason to put on a tough face for Kevin's sake anymore. At that moment, Kevin was Neil's problem, and as Andrew felt the next round rising in his throat he was glad for it because he didn't think there was any way he could be strong enough to handle Kevin's demons as well as his own and pretend not to be in pain when he could still very much feel Drake's hands on him with every retch.

~

The next few weeks had passed in a blur for Andrew. He hadn't been well enough to move very far from the toilet in his room for the first few days of his stay, and the others he had spent destroying everything within reach as everything the medication had worked so hard to drown out came rushing back. More than once, Andrew was placed in a special confinement, leaving him with nothing to destroy seeing as the walls and room was as barren as he felt. Several times though, he had to stop himself from breaking his hand against the cemented walls just to ease the frustration. Instead, he settled for pacing, stretching and going through the motions of drilling with the team. He'd never tell Kevin or Neil how grateful he had been to have that as a sort of distraction.

However, true to Andrew's life, the withdrawal, while absolute hell, had been the easiest part of Andrew's time in Rehab. He had to give life a sarcastic hand for life's consistency though, because the next bit of his very own personal hell reached a new low. Once the drugs were out of Andrew's system long enough that he could hold food in his stomach and force himself to stay calm, Dr. Proust had introduced a new regimen into Andrew's therapy. Proust called it something that made it sound innocent on a treatment slip, but it was anything but in reality. A promise of death hadn't been enough to keep Proust from touching him, and again, Andrew had to rely on those memories of Neil to hold him up.

He was almost done, and then he could go home to the Foxhole. He didn't realize that he would ever miss it. Or come to think of it as home.

The thing was... Andrew thought, no, he _knew_ , he that was fucked up. But it didn't take him long to finally realize that it was the ones who appeared not to be that you really had to watch out for. Those were the ones who liked hurt people for fun, and would forever get off on the fact that they would never get caught doing it. He liked that about Neil the most when he had come to think of it. The glaring issues and flighty habits Neil had made it so easy to tell what kind of person he really was. He'd trusted Neil before he'd even meant to, and missed him, and their game, more than he would ever care to admit.

Dr. Proust liked it when he cried out, so Andrew focused on Neil's voice to keep himself quiet, because he would be damned if he would ever give another sick bastard what he wanted.

 _"Are you afraid of your own happiness, or do you like being miserable all the time?"_   Neil had asked him that once.

He knew that Neil had always known the answer to those questions, he heard the answers in the quaking frustration that Neil had tried so hard to mask from his voice. It was terrifying really, for someone who hadn't even seen him before the drugs to pick him apart so easily and understand how awful it was not being allowed to feel anything as if that made it all simply go away. Neil had pushed every button he could to break through Andrew's drug induced mania and allow Andrew to feel something. It had been such a relief, and yet it scared him half to death, because Andrew did not believe in happiness.

He hated Neil for being able to see how desperate he actually had been underneath it all, probably as much as Neil hated him for seeing through him, too.

It hadn't been a surprise to see Neil waiting for him with the rest of his group on the day of his release, but the bruises had been. Guilt had curled darkly in his gut at that sight, but he had needed to get out of that goddamn hospital before he could address it.


	2. Demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew is left alone to face his demons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I hadn't intended to make this a multi-chapter project, but I enjoy writing Andrew so much that I'm going to keep writing them and adding. The warnings may change as I get farther into his character development, so heads up for that. Enjoy.

Getting back to the campus had been a godsend after seven weeks in hell. Hell, just being able to drive his car and drown out the world with music was almost more than he could ask for. However, enjoying freedom had left his guard down. Andrew had not been prepared for the turn his conversation with Neil had taken and it had left him reeling.

Aside from the fact that Aaron had murdered a man for him, he couldn't remember the last time, or if there had ever been a time at all, when someone had tried to protect him. It was too much to deal with sober, so he'd made his way back to the room just long enough to grab a bottle of whatever he touched first, silenced Nicky's protests with a harsh stare and then dragged himself back up to the rooftop where he leaned against the concrete wall to slide down it with the bag Nicky had insisted he take in one hand, and the bottle of vodka in the other. In the bag was a jacket, he shrugged it on even though he was too wound up to even feel the cold and drank while he tried to make sense of his thoughts.

He'd never had to worry about being found up here before, but now there was one person who would know where to look. Even as his stomach churned with anxiety at that fact, he couldn't bring himself to mind. Not if it was Neil. The thing was, Neil had always known exactly what words to  say to throw him off balance. Even under the smokescreen of his medicated mania, Neil had been able to move in and scratch something raw inside of Andrew, but this . . .

_"If it means losing you, then no."_

Those words had undone him entirely and it had been all he could do to hold on to that mask he wore, Andrew had almost wished that he had been medicated to hear that if it could have lessened the pressure it had left in his chest.

Years ago, he'd given up on the hope that anyone might want to keep him around. It wasn't that he didn't know why they all left; Who would want someone that was so dead inside all they were capable of was anger around, right? So Andrew learned to make deals to protect people to keep them close. He protected them for the low, low price of not having to be alone.

Then Neil came along . . . and even though their first meeting had ended with Neil gasping for breath after Andrew had attacked him with a racquet- somehow they had ended up here, with Neil wearing God only knew how many new scars for Andrew's sake. Andrew felt like the world was tilting sideways, there was no explanation in the world that could make him understand why someone like Neil who had always run for his life, would put himself in so much danger to make Andrew's life easier. He gripped his hair so tight he could feel the skin of his scalp pulling tight against his skull as if that would make comprehension possible.

"You idiot." He didn't know if he meant himself or Neil, probably both.

Long ago Andrew had vowed to himself that he would never make the mistake of letting anyone into his heart again. It never ended well for him. It was too easy for everyone else to move along. That would hurt anyone, but for someone who had been walked away from since birth, it was absolutely torture to watch it happen again and again. There was a special hell reserved inside the head of people who knew they were unwanted by the mother that birthed them, but oh, it was worse when you were the only twin to grow up away from your mother. Growing up, Andrew had always rationalized the people walking away from him with the dark thought that if his mother didn't want him, why would anyone else? A dark promise to himself to keep everyone away was easier than subjecting to the pain again and again with a false sense of hope.

The only people who hadn't walked away from him were the ones who hurt him and Cass Spear, the foster mother who actually wanted him, and by a cruel twist of fate, the only one he would have been willing to suffer to keep. He thought of Neil's blue eyes in the moment he'd realized he'd failed to protect Andrew, and the noises he'd made against his palm in pure grief for Andrew's pain and leaned his head back against the wall hard enough for it to hurt and stared up at the sky. Could he really have this? How much would he have to suffer to keep Neil?

Remembering Neil's words again felt useless now, but again, he heard them as clear as the day Neil had spoken them,

_"Are you afraid of your own happiness, or do you like being miserable all the time?"_

Andrew pulled his hands out of his hair, and reached for his cigarettes, only to watch his hand shake as he held them. He told himself he wasn't trying to shake away the feeling as he shook the cigarette and lighter out, but without the medication he couldn't fool himself anymore.

"I am so fucking afraid." He whispered, and the cold breeze swallowed it as it howled through the mostly empty campus.

His outward reaction had been to tell Neil that he hated him in hopes that might deter him if Andrew happened to be wrong, but when he'd watched Neil pick up his cigarette and put it to his lips in silent challenge, that was the exact moment he realized that he was falling, and fast. He'd had to move away from the ledge for fear that he'd actually fall.

Now, Andrew took a long drink from the bottle, held it up against the sky to see how much he had left before throwing it back for another and silently prayed that he would finally die when he hit rock bottom this time.


	3. Stars

The stars were bright that night as Andrew sat on the steps of the porch with his cigarette. Everyone else had gone to bed, but Andrew found himself unable to sleep. It had been so long since he'd gotten back from a night at Eden's Twilight and not had to crash that he couldn't remember the last time he'd sat outside like this and just looked up at the stars. It wasn't the same as it was back at the university. The campus lights were so frequent and so bright that they drowned out most of the stars, but out here, there were so few lights here that he was even able to trace out a few of the more known constellations. He'd forgotten all of the stories that accompanied them, but it was interesting enough to connect the dots and see a picture where there was actually just a giant cluster of balls of gas. It made him feel small though, and Andrew wasn't sure how he felt about that. Soon enough though the stars vanished; Neil's scars had taken their place. There were so many just on Neil's torso alone that if Andrew were to take a marker and draw lines from random scar to random scar it probably wouldn't be hard to see pictures there either. He had expected the jagged cuts and never-fading bruises after suspecting that Neil's parents had been abusive but the scar from where a bullet had pierced him caught Andrew by surprise. He hated all surprises, but this one left him feeling sick. Neil's fearful and flighty nature didn't seem so silly anymore, and yet all he had said was, " _I told you someone was after me._ "

He hadn't even seen them all. Andrew hadn't been able to bring himself to search for the rest, especially since Riko's handiwork was overlapping most of them in an abstract painting of severe cruelty. Those wounds were still fresh enough that Andrew knew firsthand the pain Neil was in. Andrew had cut through his own scar tissue many times and though it was said that it was impossible to remember pain, his arms had ached in response as he peeled away each bandage and noted each gash and how it made the pearly skin of the scars unforgiving and angry where it had been torn open. Andrew had killed his own mother for doing less to Aaron than Riko had done to Neil. If Andrew ever got his hands on Riko after the championship game, he would enjoy using every single one of his knives to recreate the hell he'd seen on Neil's body, then he'd use his favorite serrated one to carve out Riko's heart so he could send it back to the Moriyama's in a paper bag, consequences be damned.

After he'd seen the scars, Andrew only understood Neil's need for secrecy more. It wasn't much different than his reasons for not telling anyone about Drake when he thought about it and that made another round of nausea swirl around in his stomach. Neil's secrets kept him alive, just like Andrew's had.

_"I'll kill you if you tell anyone." Drake had said, and Andrew didn't doubt him, but he spat in his face anyway just to buy himself more time before the inevitable. The next minute happened so fast, he didn't remember Drake getting rid of the bottom half of his clothes or how he'd gotten Andrew pinned to the bed on his hands and knees, all of that had been lost in a blur of pain and motion. Andrew only remembered the burn of the grip Drake had on his wrists, the way his fingers went numb with the lack of circulation and the fire that had shot up his spine as Drake had his way with him._

He shook so hard the ash fell from his cigarette of its own accord and he willed away the memory of Drake's hand at his throat and his voice in his ear, husky and disgusting, as he watched it fall and go cold. That had only been one of the times Drake had raped Andrew.

It took him a little backtracking through his mental process to remember why he'd allowed himself to remember that so vividly. His hands shook violently, and he wished that he could feel the cold so he could stop remembering Drake's heat as he followed the direction of his thoughts in reverse.

Drake. Staying alive. Secrets. Similarity. Neil. And stars, but he stopped at Neil.

When he remembered where he started, he sighed and closed his eyes. Neil couldn't be his answer for everything and yet here he was again, saving himself from darkness using Neil as a life raft. Again. However, Andrew couldn't seem to let go no matter how badly he wanted to.

He'd heard the story of how Neil had realized something was wrong in the Hemmick house that day, Renee had told him what the rest had told her; that Neil had known something was wrong and when he realized that Andrew was alone with Drake that he'd charged in like some sort of knight in shining armor. Nicky had told him that the look on Neil's face when Maria had told him that Andrew was with Drake had been downright murderous before he'd stormed back into the house.

Gratitude tasted bitter in Andrew's mouth. There was another instance that Renee had told him about when he'd gotten back that gave him goosebumps when he remembered the way she told it. Neil had told Kevin that he'd give up the season for Andrew's sake. Renee had smiled and said, "He cares about you a lot, Andrew. I think you should let him in."

She'd taken the look he gave her with a grain of salt and answered with a kind and knowing smile.

When he opened his eyes again, it took a few seconds for them to adjust to the darkness. It just didn't make sense. Neil had every reason to fear Andrew seeing the fact that he was just as capable of murder as the people who had given him all of those scars. Yet, he specifically remembered Neil telling him that he wasn't afraid. What the hell was going on inside of Neil's head that made him stupid enough to trust Andrew? Stupid enough even to say, 'I'm not afraid of you.'? The answer was in his head somewhere, he could feel it like a word that rested on the tip of his tongue and it evaded him each time he got closer to it like a will o' the wisp.

"Abram." He hadn't meant to speak the name aloud, but he didn't regret it either when it took physical form in front of him as an icy cloud, it swirled and curled in on itself before vanishing, Andrew watched it go.

Abram was Neil's real middle name, it was also the truest thing Neil had ever told him. Abram meant, "exalted father" but to Andrew it meant "Trust" and "Real". He'd given it to Andrew so he could have something to trust while he'd be away. Andrew had taken a dangerous chance by putting his trust in Neil so he could be free, but Neil had not failed him, in fact he'd gone beyond everything Andrew had expected of him. It hadn't helped Andrew in the end, but he could see in Neil's eyes, his real eyes, that he didn't regret trying, which made him all the different shades of dangerous.

Andrew's gaze dropped from the stars and he leaned forward to rest his forearms on his knees as he flicked his cigarette and watched the smoke rise and dance slowly in the nearly non-existent winter breeze. He'd not yet reached the point where cold fazed him, but it felt good to take deep breaths of the icy air in order to clear his head.

To make everything even more complicated, Roland had slipped up at Eden's Twilight tonight and had inadvertently helped Neil put the pieces of Andrew's crush together. Andrew knew Neil was an idiot, but originally thought he knew already, so when Neil didn't catch on to Wymack's teasing, Andrew had thought he had an easy out. You can't have someone who doesn't know you want them. He would have kept Neil in the dark forever if he could have because now he had to worry about reciprocation. If Renee was right, and Neil really did care about him, it could only end in pain because Andrew didn't know how to care back.

It made nothing easier now that Neil now knew, but seeing Neil's reaction had been more than worth letting the secret go. Andrew's lips snaked into a smile as he tossed his cigarette on to the gravel walkway and remembered the way Neil had to catch himself lest he fall over in shock, like he finally felt the world tilting sideways. Andrew had wished he could see inside of Neil's head on more than one occasion but if he had to choose just one, he'd want to see that moment, if only just to see the way his words put a picture in Neil's head. But more than that, he was sure that it scared Neil almost as much as it did himself, and that was pretty satisfying because he thought Neil ought to take responsibility for taking everything Andrew thought himself to be and turning it upside down.

When Neil had come to the Foxhole, everything had felt as if it had shifted sideways for Andrew, too. The attraction Andrew felt to Neil was easy enough to ignore at first due to all of Neil's lies and his own suspicion about Neil's intent but as time passed, even medicated and flying high on chemical amusement, Andrew knew how to see what each truth Neil actually told cost him. He knew how to search a face and find all the cracks in the mask because he did it everyday to his own reflection every morning before he took his pills. Neil's mask had cracked for him during that conversation at Wymack's just enough that Andrew had been able to understand the importance of his secrets, so he'd backed away. Still wanting to know the truth, but more out of his own curiosity than anything, he let Neil have his space because without him being a threat, the attraction was a dangerous thing that would come alive if nourished enough. He hadn't expected Neil to follow him when he retreated, and hadn't expected himself to want him to either.

Yet here they were. Neil had a key to his home, implicit permission to drive his car, and a verbal contract that promised safety. Andrew told himself time and time again that it was only to keep Neil from running, but at this point he questioned his motives for wanting Neil to stay because it didn't very much feel like it was only for Kevin's sake anymore.

He lit another cigarette and took one long drag and held it for a few seconds in hopes of steadying his breathing enough to stave off the slight panic that rose up in his throat as the answer came into focus. He may want Neil, but he knew he had nothing left to give, which made him wonder what it was exactly that he wanted from him. Despite what he'd said to Neil about blowing him, he wasn't ready for that yet. Sex was not what he wanted from Neil. It was maddening to feel such a pull for apparently no reason, so Andrew started keeping track of how much that shapeless want was driving him crazier in percentages. The number was resting at eighty-two percent so far, but it rose in small increments each day and he wasn't sure what would happen when he reached one-hundred, so he tried to convince himself that he was actually keeping track of how much he hated Neil in hopes that maybe it would become true, because that really would be easier.

Neil's willingness to give without expectation of receiving anything in return made him even more terrifying because it was easy to take advantage of someone who expected nothing and Andrew did not want to be that person, especially not to Neil, the only person to ever take a, no several, beatings for him. It had been so much worse than a beating though, and every time Neil so much as winced Andrew had to bite the inside his of cheek until the metallic tang of blood coated his tongue to fight the need to unleash his rage on whoever was closest. He only had so much control over it because the one beside him these days was usually Neil.

He attempted to distract himself from those dangerous thoughts by thinking of the promises he'd made to both Kevin and Neil. The Moriyama's were a dangerous and formidable enemy to have and he'd been suicidal enough when he'd met Kevin to take the risk, but now Andrew spent plenty of nights wondering if he'd be enough. Even he knew that Riko couldn't kill Kevin. Their rivalry was now too public and Riko would fall under scrutiny almost instantly if anything ever happened to Kevin. Neil on the other hand, he was the one in real danger. One small slip up on Andrew's part and the next wound Neil received might not have time to heal and scar. Andrew would die to keep Neil from falling back into Riko's hands.

He was not afraid to die for a promise. Hell, his own death had been the plan for himself when he'd taken out Aaron's mother, but he'd somehow survived the crash. Andrew believed in fate, especially after meeting his twin in the most unlikely of ways and he'd felt just enough fear as the car had collided head on with a mini-van to later convince himself to stop cutting because Fate was a dangerous thing to tempt, and he didn't really want to die of suicide. Andrew felt like he was able to step out of that mangled car because there was something meaningful out there for him and while a part of him sneered inwardly at the notion, it, and his promise to Aaron, had been enough to carry him until he arrived with the Foxes. Then Kevin showed up, and Andrew had jumped headfirst into his mess. He'd thought for a while that protecting Kevin and upholding his end of their deal was the purpose of his survival, but then he'd met Neil. Suddenly he wasn't so sure, because when he met Neil's piercing gaze, he often found himself wishing for more.

Andrew ran his thumb over his bottom lip and scraped his fingernail against the cold skin.

All of his thoughts kept ending up here. He wasn't lying when he told Neil that he hated him, he just hadn't been finishing the sentence.

"I hate you for reminding me how it feels to want something."

If he wanted to keep whatever it was Neil might be able to offer him, and he was afraid that he would, he had to remember how to let himself have it.

He realized that the sun had started to peek up over the horizon, and cursed silently because that meant he had lost a few hours of sleep. Andrew stood and dusted his jeans off as he watched the trees turn into a blaze while the sunrise devoured them. He felt the same every time he looked at Neil, though the emotion that engulfed him was an erratic and fluid thing that felt a lot like static.

Andrew was the vast night sky, and Neil was the sunrise, ending the night with light and warmth. However, each night the sun still set and the darkness returned. That was exactly what Andrew was afraid of.


	4. Sciamachy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes Memories are the shadows of demons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter should probably have some Trigger Warnings, mostly because writing it triggered me a little. (I am so ready to be done with this chapter, you have no idea.)
> 
> Possible Triggers:
> 
> Graphic memories of Rape  
> Mentions of Self Harm  
> Suicidal thoughts
> 
> And less of a trigger but possibly a gross out:
> 
> Violent vomiting.
> 
> Enjoy! ⭐

Neil's shoulders were tight with annoyance as he pushed off of the couch and disappeared through the locker room door. Andrew draped his arm back over his eyes, to block out the image or the buzzing fluorescent lights, one of them, maybe both. Neil had stayed back to try talking him into joining them for their midnight practice, probably trying to see how he could use Andrew's attraction in his favor. Telling Neil no was not as fun as it was with Kevin, but showing Neil how stubborn he could be was, and if Andrew was lucky maybe he could annoy Neil just enough that he would give up and leave him alone just like Kevin had. However, Neil had a talent for finding raw spots. He'd found them through the mania and he could find them through Andrew's forced indifference, too.

Neil had been provoked to hit back, of course. Andrew had known before the words left his lips that his comment about the hounds closing in would be a low and nasty blow, but he was too damn tired and irritable to deal with Neil ideologies and optimism about Exy in that moment, and was even less willing after the way Neil's eyes had widened in flighty fear. Andrew just hadn't expected Neil to sucker punch him with a fact that made him think in return.

"Because you don't have anything, do you?" Neil's voice had been low, nearly a growl, and there was an undertone to the words as he continued; An invitation to open the flood gates that Andrew held everything locked behind. "Nothing gets to you like that. Nothing gets under your skin."

Part of him knew Neil could handle it, but the other part was too angry to even bother considering it.

 _How dare you try to trick me into opening up to you when you still think about running_.

A small drop slipped under the gate anyway.

"What are you afraid of?" Neil asked.

"Heights."

He was serious. Heights terrified him, but it was also his favorite fear because it was the most normal. No one wanted to fall to their death.

Judging by the way that Neil said his name, " _Andrew_ ," he knew that Neil didn't believe him, which did not help his mood. So he'd ended the conversation and let Neil leave as annoyed as he was.

Exhaustion stole the annoyance away as soon as Andrew heard the door to the court slam closed behind Neil. While his fatigue did wonders for keeping himself reigned in because he had zero energy to spare for useless bullshit, it was starting to take a toll on his head, which wasn't really something he could afford. Even worse, his frustratingly increasing habit of relying on Neil to save his mind from the darkness that constantly threatened to close in had no power to save him anymore either. Andrew could hardly control his racing and wandering thoughts when he was awake, controlling it when he slept was out of the question.

Since the first night he returned to the Foxhole Andrew had been plagued by nightmares. Nightmares had always been a fact of life for Andrew. However, these new ones were several hundred times more frightening because he couldn't figure out if they were just a result of his damaged psyche or resurfacing pieces of the broken kaleidoscope memories from his time at Easthaven. The sick fear that the nightmares were actually memories was enough that after a few nights of them, he'd begun forcing himself to stay awake. Andrew did not want to know, not without the anti-depressants in his system to distort the despair and anger. Knowing the details would only make him want to take his body back again. A promise to himself stood between him and the knives he'd taken from Renee, but God, he itched for the pain each night as fighting sleep got harder and worse each morning when, despite his best efforts not to fall asleep, he woke to phantom pain of bites all along his scars and memories of Proust's mouth against his skin.

Even now he was afraid to fall asleep, though it was also all he wanted. It was a reoccurring theme in Andrew's life for him to be afraid of what he wanted and needed most, so much so that the pure irony of it was almost stupidly comical, but he was tired of laughing. Andrew rolled on to his side and let his arm hang off of the couch while he used his shoulder and bicep as an uncomfortable pillow while he stared blankly at the wall. He hadn't meant to start thinking about the lost memories as he traced the lines between the painted cinder blocks that made up the walls of the lounge with his eyes like it was a maze. In fact, it had been the exact opposite intention, but Andrew's mind had never had an OFF switch. As his eyes followed each crease in the wall, his mind started to wander and the lower he followed it the heavier his eyelids got. He wouldn't remember closing his eyes later.

For seven weeks. Seven. Weeks. Andrew had been in that hospital, and yet he could only actively remember details for three of them at most. The first he had been violently ill. The second, violently angry, the third week he remembered was the week before he left while his body was healing from the abuse so he'd have no proof if he tried to tell anyone about it. That left an approximately four week hole that he remembered in small, drug hazed glimpses. He knew that Proust had drugged his food with something that made him weak and sluggish, then used his body like every other sick fuck on the planet had. If he refused to eat, he would be given the sedative via injection by a team of orderlies who held him down. No matter how hard he fought or whose face he maimed, they restrained him to his bed with tight straps around his wrists and ankles. The details after that, however, blurred together with changing ties, cruel taunts and Neil's voice saying stupid hopeful things in his head as Andrew willed himself to remember exactly how his voice held a tiny unplaceable accent each time he told a truth. Or the way the lights at Eden's Twilight made his natural eye color so vibrant, just so he could focus on something other than the way Proust's voice sounded each time he moaned, " _How does that feel, A.J?_ " and, " _I can tell you like that_." just like Drake used to.

How Proust had known everything that would leave Andrew questioning every motive he'd ever had to stay alive, Andrew didn't know, but he had. Every bit of it. The nicknames, the places to touch that would make his body respond involuntarily, the words that made him want to throw up and the words that made him want to commit another murder.

Proust had known all of it, and used it and used it and used it until Andrew was a shell of himself. It had gotten to the point that whenever he heard Proust's arrival via the metallic scrape of a key sliding into the lock, he checked out almost entirely. Disgust flared inside of his stomach and he had to fight the urge to throw up, but as loaded with sedatives as he had been, he had been completely unable to fight back, and even if he hadn't been drugged to the gills he couldn't fight back if he ever wanted to make it back home to the Foxhole.

So most times he laid there and focused on Neil's voice, his eyes, his scars, the pain in his voice that day at Wymack's, the sound of Drake's skull crunching under the blow of a heavy. On the best days, Andrew would black out. On the worst days, he couldn't, and those were the days that Proust figured out how to make Andrew come against his will and left him, a nearly broken mess, to clean himself up and attempt to salvage the shattered pieces of his dignity. He often imagined killing Neil in the most brutal ways imaginable for getting him into the mess he was in as he sat on the cold tiled floor of the shower in his room at Easthaven while willing the hot water to sink straight through his skin and burn the stain on his soul away, but his hatred always ended back at himself. If he'd been able to tell Neil 'no', he would have never ended up there. Or so he had thought, but after finding out about Riko's involvement, Andrew suspected that he would have ended up in Proust's hands one way or another, so Neil was hardly to blame. The bright side had been that this way had resulted in Drake's death, though he still wished that Aaron hadn't been the one to kill him.

Since Andrew had been lying awake at night for the better half of a week, he'd heard Aaron start awake in the middle of the night several times, too. He had known that Aaron would suffer from the nightmares, but he had not expected to be awake to witness the aftermath. Nor to feel so helpless. Aaron would wake with a series of muffled sobs and Andrew could do nothing. Even if Andrew had known what to say to him, he doubted that Aaron would listen. It was in the dark, all of those nights, listening to Aaron wake up with choked cries and gagging as he rushed to throw up, that he wished he did have the capacity for sympathy and the ability to reach out to comfort his brother. That wish only made black hatred swallow his entire being. Those things had been stolen from him long before he'd even been old enough to comprehend them. So night after night he listened, anger churning in his gut as Aaron cried, puked and then his haggard voice in the living room as he presumably talked to Katelyn. Andrew had never been able to deal with women, Renee being the exception, in his mind they were too self-absorbed and weak to be useful. Aaron's voice always lost its desperate edge after listening to a few of her replies though, and while Andrew hated Katelyn for the betrayal she was against his promise to Aaron, he was grateful that she had the ability to do what he couldn't. Shortly after the conversation ended, Aaron would sneak back into the bedroom, crawl back into his bed and he'd sleep for the rest of the night. It was usually after that Andrew would lose track of his thoughts and fall asleep, too.

It never ended well.

A fractured mess of images and sound that didn't match, the nightmares were almost never the same twice, and the more he remembered them, the less able he was to convince himself that they were only nightmares. Especially when they coincided with the memories he had been able to retain.

_His own hands grasping until knuckles white at blood spattered white sheets, wrists tied down painfully with restraints that bit in harder if he tried to fight, a knife, the hazy feeling of drugs slowing him down as Proust parted his thighs and pain, pain and more pain._

_"You actually like that, don't you, A.J?"_

_Proust's disgusting chuckle. A finger smearing across his lips, invading his mouth, smoothing over his tongue until he was nearly gagging on it. Proust's nauseating taste. These were definitely memories._

Andrew woke with a start and had to launch himself across the lounge to make it to the bathroom in time to heave heavily into the toilet. Most were dry, gasping coughs seeing as it'd been too long since his last meal, there was nothing left in his stomach to purge except the sour stomach acid that burned its way up his throat, but even that wouldn't come easily. His stomach convulsed and he had to grip the toilet seat until his knuckles went white to fight against the pain that seared every nerve ending across his chest and back with each struggled, involuntary retch. He could feel the pained nerves and exactly how they branched through his body as every desperate attempt to vomit sent electric bolts of pain lancing through them like lightning just under his skin. Until finally he'd purged all the acid he could and was left lying on the floor with a cold burning ache all over, willing his body to stop shaking. He preferred the aftertaste of the bile that stuck in his mouth, sickly and sour, compared to the salty memory of Proust.

Once he was able to breathe again without his stomach bucking in disgusted protest, Andrew wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and went back to the lounge.

Remembering was the worst, and now, he got so lost in remembering that he didn't. Andrew didn't remember pulling the knife from the sheath in his arm band, and he didn't remember peeling the easily stretching fabric away from his skin or letting both of the bands fall in heaps to the linoleum floor. He didn't remember making the decision to place the blade to his already ruined arm, but once the cold metal touched his skin the world slid back into focus.

A few quick strokes and his body would be his again. Andrew could never forget the pain of the assaults he'd endured or the damage that each one had done to his mind, but he could own the pain. He could own his body and take it back again by dragging the blade across his already marred skin and- His reflection glinted in the blade's small surface. For a moment he searched his dead eyes for a sign of, well, anything.

Andrew could see nothing in those eyes. Not pain, not sadness, not anger, just nothing. After all the time that he'd spent telling himself that he wanted nothing, those dead eyes sent a jolt through him. Was this really what he wanted?

Emptiness was nothing new. By the time Andrew was five, he had already developed a fear of men, flinched whenever he was touched and dreamed of having a superpower that made him invisible. By the time he was eight, there was enough rage in his tiny body that he'd hardly been able to contain it, and he'd learned that violence felt good. By thirteen he had plotted at least three murders, and at fifteen, he'd bled for all the times he wished he'd never been born. Now, at twenty, Andrew kept hoping that maybe he would find something, some indication that it was all over and that he really had survived, but the more he searched his face on the surface of the steel blade, the more it was like looking at a corpse.

Andrew tightened his grip on the handle of the knife and continued staring at his reflection, transfixed by it. The blade felt heavy in his hands as he shifted it to face his chest and pressed the sharp tip to the fabric of his shirt until he felt the sharp prick of pain. If it was always going to be like this then perhaps he should just . . .

An echo from a ball ricocheting off the court wall and a triumphant whoop that was definitely Neil's bounced around the hall until it reached Andrew in the lounge. It startled him enough that he let the knife clatter to the floor.

He stared at it for a long time, taking in the way the blade appeared too white in the artificial light and how it didn't do justice matching the severity of the moment before he gave up and pulled the armbands back on and slid the knife back into the sheath he'd sewn inside.

Whether it was true or not, he let himself believe, as he lifted his hand to his throat and found his pulse with two shaking fingers, that it was Neil who hit the shot that broke him out of that dangerous trance. Because the thought of Neil was calming, and if anyone could steady the racing of his heart right then it would be him. Because no matter how hard Andrew tried to deny it, Neil was the nothing that got to him, the nothing that crawled under his skin. The nothing Andrew wanted. As annoying as he was, with his lies and partial truths, he'd seen something inside of Andrew that he trusted, deemed worthy enough, to stay for. Neil could find pieces of him that no one else could, that no one else bothered to look for. Whether it be because he could see through Andrew's carefully placed mask, or that he just knew where to look, Andrew had no idea, but he knew that if he asked Neil to look for the life inside of him, a reason for existing, that he'd find it without having to look twice.

Perhaps though, Andrew thought, Neil wouldn't need to. The unsteady beat, beat, beat that Andrew had found in his throat proved that he was very much alive.


	5. Irresistible

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Upstate International is an awful place to have a life shattering realization.

The crowd at Upstate International was enough alone to give Andrew hives. The rest of the team's energy despite the groggy weather was just completing the sensation. It did not help his mood any that his arms felt unusually light since he had to leave his knives at home to make it through airport security, either. In their stead, Andrew had a pen in each sheath. In the event of an emergency, they could be weapons well enough, but a knife or two would have made him feel much better. As the Foxes made their way through the bustling crowds and passed dozens of shops that threatened to garner their, even Andrew's, attention with warm, sweet scents that wafted through the mall-like stretch they had to walk to find their gate, he remembered a quote he'd once seen someone post somewhere, something about the sincerity of an airport. He supposed it was true in some ways, warm hellos and tearful goodbyes were terribly sincere things, and though no one else seemed to notice, they were present even now. A mother bid her son in uniform goodbye over by a pretzel vendor, and giddy children ran into the arms of their father who had dropped his bags to accommodate them while a woman waited behind them for her turn. However, that warmth nor the sincerity of it ever made actually boarding a plane any easier for Andrew. Not because he had no one to hug him goodbye or welcome him home with a genuine smile when he returned; he couldn't really give a damn less about that. No, it was because the idea of being miles above the earth's surface at the mercy of a relatively thin case of metal and trusting a pilot who may or may not have slept in the past 24 hours to deliver you safely was not very reassuring. Trust was not a thing Andrew gave to strangers.

Fear wasn't a thing Andrew admitted to easily, but if he had to he would admit to his fear of heights, and possibly his fear of crashing because they weren't so much a weakness as common sense. The fear of crashing had been acquired after the car wreck with Aaron's mother. Crunching metal, breaking glass and the dying screams of the people who had been in the mini-van they hit were sounds that still haunted some of his tamer nightmares, but he couldn't remember ever not being afraid of heights. Even as a child, while other children were climbing on top of jungle gyms and swing sets, Andrew had found that he preferred it on the ground. During recesses in Elementary school, he would entertain himself, sometimes he would get into fist fights with the other children, and sometimes he would tuck himself underneath playground equipment with a book the librarian had given him and he would spend the afternoon in a magical place, far away from everything that hurt. No matter what he was doing, he made sure he was on the ground.

Flying was a lot different than climbing. The height difference was nearly astronomical, and the aftermath was likely to be a lot more brutal when falling from thousands of feet than it was falling from a simple ten, or even from the four stories of Fox Tower. Andrew had flown before so his nerves weren't a first time thing. The first time had been when he'd signed with the Foxes with Aaron (Upstate International was a cake walk compared to LAX) and while he'd been anxious about it, the skies had at least been clear which had eliminated 'weather' off of the list of possible disasters that made his anxiety about flying soar, but he'd still been frozen in his seat through the entire flight. He'd flown for a game, and flown to recruit Neil and had survived them all, however, again, the skies had been clear. Today, the clouds were menacing and roiling overhead while rain pelted at the window hard in cold, fat drops. His checklist of things that could possibly go wrong was full and his two biggest normal fears collided catastrophically inside his hammering heart like cymbals.

Every movie, headline, and story he'd ever watched, read or heard about planes crashing or vanishing now clouded his mind as he stared out the giant window at the plane the Foxes were all set to board at 1:20pm to make their way to Atlanta. There was no way the sky would clear up in time and though bad weather didn't guarantee a crash, it definitely raised the risks. The thing that bothered him the most about the idea was that if the plane did go down, there was nothing he could do to uphold his promises of safety to Aaron, Kevin, or Neil, and nothing Renee could do to save the rest. It was all up to chance, or Fate, or whatever the hell it was he believed in. He couldn't even put trust on living people, putting it on an idea seemed even more foolish, but he didn't really have a choice.

Once the team found the Vixens at the gate, they scattered to waste time at the many shops they'd passed on their way through the airport. Andrew, however, had frozen the moment he'd seen the impossibly big wall-length window that allowed travelers to watch the activity on the tarmac. Hopelessly ensnared by the way the thick coat of rain streaming down the window distorted everything until it was all a mess of moving colors and flashing lights, he watched a crew as they fought against the gale outside and loaded trolley after trolley into the plane's cargo holder. The blue tarp covering one of the bulkier trolleys flapped violently in the wind, and for a brief moment, he was able to see the impudent orange of the cart that held their Exy gear. A stab of worry that it would all get ruined by the rain and be useless by the time they made it to Texas was quickly replaced by stomach dropping panic as his attention was drawn to a plane now barreling down the runway. How the pilot could see anything when the rain was so heavy Andrew could hardly see through the window was a mystery and it was less than comforting to believe that they were relying solely on the computers in the cockpit to know where to go. Yet no one else seemed concerned as they chattered on about useless things and went exploring, which was more than irritating. Andrew was focusing on remembering how to breathe when Neil spoke.

"When you said you were afraid of heights, you were joking, right?" It only took a few seconds to readjust his eyes so that rather than focusing through the glass, he was looking at it. Neil's reflection held nothing to betray what he might be thinking of Andrew's fear. Andrew had to wonder if it was this infuriating to other people when he himself did the same thing.

  
_How little you must think of me if you are so surprised that I told you the truth._

It hurt more than Andrew was willing to admit that Neil might think him a liar, but he would never say as much. In fact, because nothing pissed him off more than being assumed a liar, especially when all he had ever told Neil were truths, he decided to say nothing at all. Neil took his silence as confirmation.

  
"Andrew, you can't be. What were you doing on the roof?" Neil's voice had changed in tone, and now held concern as he realized his mistake. His eyes, though their color was lost in the dark sky outside, mirrored it. Even via reflection, Andrew could see the permission inside of them. He'd seen it that day on the couch, too. The only person who ever looked at him like that was Bee. Genuine, raw and ready for whatever he might decide to throw at her. Andrew hadn't known what to do with Bee when he'd met her either. He'd assumed that she'd give up once he gave her a real glimpse at the spiral of the darkness that wrapped itself around his head and heart, just like everyone else had, but she'd made him another cup of cocoa and asked him to continue without even flinching. Neil hadn't flinched either. Even from the beginning, where everyone else saw a ticking time bomb because of the media portrayal and second hand stories, Neil saw something that he could handle, just like Bee had.

Andrew needed Bee.

Neil was not allowed to be like her, but he was.

_Stop it, I'm still trying to hate you._

His first instinct was to walk away. Instead, he tilted his head as he considered how, or if, he wanted to answer Neil's question. The action was more for Neil's sake then his own.

 _I'm thinking. Stay put_.

There was only one word he could think of to explain why he spent time up on the roof top of the Foxhole since Andrew didn't think he could articulate it into words he wouldn't feel dirty saying aloud. Especially since the last time he'd given Neil an honest answer Neil had assumed it was a lie.

He pressed two of his fingers to that precious beat in his throat, the one that proved that he was alive even if the eyes of his reflection looked dead and corpse-like, and tapped out a visual of his racing heart before he answered, deciding that this would be Neil's last chance to believe him.

"Feeling,"

Neil didn't even miss a beat.

"Trying to remember fear, or trying to remember how to feel anything at all?"

_Oh, Neil. I've always felt it._

He almost turned and said as much, but thought better of it because hell if _that_ wasn't a lie. So Andrew decided to stay silent, because he wasn't ready to bare himself to Neil yet. Not when Neil already made him feel so naked by crawling under his skin and making a home there.

He studied his reflection, and Neil's as well, it was then that he noticed the fact that their jackets matched and wondered if Nicky had done that on purpose.

"If it makes you feel better," Neil continued when he didn't respond. "fewer than twenty planes crash every year and it's not always due to the weather. Sometimes pilots are just unreliable. I'm sure it's a quick death either way."

Andrew forgot about his pulse as Neil's uncanny ability to find those raw spots made another reappearance and his arm slowly dropped to his side. Andrew had told Neil the second time they'd met, " _Don't be so afraid to die_." But Neil had picked up on Andrew's fear of dying anyway. He'd pinpointed that it wasn't solely a fear of heights that set Andrew on edge until his heart raced, and now he was using it against him.

" _Trying to remember fear, or trying to remember how to feel anything at all_?" Neil's words from mere moments before echoed in his head, and the entire world came to a screeching halt.

 _Oh_.

It struck Andrew like a lightning bolt and he was rooted to the floor as he all at once understood what Neil was trying to do. What he had _always_ been trying to do.

_Through the sickening scent of hospital soap and the haze of his concussion Andrew had stared at Neil in the driveway of the house in Colombia and blamed him for all the pain he was in._

_"You helped create this mess. The least you could do is help clean it up." He'd said._

_The pain on Neil's face had been funny then, because there was just enough of the drug left in his system to allow it, but it was fading quickly. It had been too late in the evening by the time he was released from the hospital to take another dose, so he was awake and aware and in so much pain despite all of the painkillers he'd been given. He'd had to quickly shove all of the emotions that threatened to swallow him alive down, down, down, so he could keep from killing everyone in that house out of the sheer frustration of not knowing how to react to them all knowing that he'd been too weak to fight against Drake. The appearance of Bee had not helped, the last thing he'd wanted was her understanding, her pity, or worse, to talk about what had happened. He'd have been better off just taking a pill and messing up the schedule to avoid feeling so raw, but that would have be dangerous for everyone if he had to skip his morning dose and Andrew had been in too much pain already to risk dealing with an overdose._

_Andrew didn't remember putting his hand around Neil's throat as he and Neil talked. He remembered blame, guilt, and anger so fierce it set all of his wounds throbbing. His control had begun to slip because he hadn't expected Neil to dig into every place that he wasn't strong enough to ignore. Control had been lost entirely when Neil asked what had gone wrong. Andrew did not feel that he owed Neil any explanations, and found it a ballsy move that Neil had felt he had room to demand anything from Andrew after the mess he'd gotten him into. Cass, and the other children had been the rawest thing Andrew had left, and Neil had pierced it hard enough that the guilt rushed out and engulfed him entirely._

_Andrew knew exactly what he was doing as he tightened his fingers around Neil's throat. He'd felt Neil's pulse quicken as it struggled to move past his fingertips and he'd taken such satisfaction in the fact that all it would take was a simple flick of his wrist and he could end him. Andrew had been about to do it, too. To kill Neil would to be to end the one person left in the world who could hurt him like this. But he'd seen Neil's eyes, even as the skin of Neil's neck had turned angry and red around his fingers and his face an ugly shade of purple, he did not fight, he had not been afraid._

_As he looked into those eyes, he realized that if Neil ever died, he would miss him. This infuriating man had already become a piece of him. Even back then._

_So he'd loosened his grip, and given Neil exactly what he wanted. The disgusting and painful truth. At the time, Andrew had been too defeated, and in far too much pain to realize that he would soon be looking for the exact same thing Neil had been looking for by pushing all those boundaries._

Anything still alive behind those dead hazel eyes.

 _"Better luck next time." Andrew had said that night, just before he told Neil that he didn't feel anything. At the time, he'd believed it. As he'd turned away, Neil's voice had been a fragile, wounded thing as he'd whispered, "_ Anymore _."_

_That single word had held so much pain. It was as if Neil had been feeling everything that Andrew both couldn't and refused to let himself feel, as if Andrew hadn't just wanted, been about to, kill him._

Andrew understood now that it was because he _was_. Everything Neil had said before that, the hurtful things that Andrew had batted away as if they were pesky flies instead of painful facts, the taunts, and the challenges, they had all been desperate attempts to get Andrew to break his forced calm. To think that after all Neil had survived, he would be so stupid as to try tempting him into breaking his control, especially when everyone knew what happened to people when it broke. It was infuriating to Andrew, and reckless on Neil's part. Andrew had placed a vacuum seal over his dangerous emotions for the protection of everyone around him, and here Neil was trying to tear it away with his metaphorical bare hands because was not afraid of the consequences. Presumably because Renee had been right, and it wasn't just about Exy anymore.

Andrew didn't know what that possibility made him want to do more; to introduce Neil's face repeatedly to the thick glass of the airport window for being so stupid or to push him up against it, bury his fingers in his hair and kiss him until Neil's lips were raw and sore with the memory of his own because Andrew didn't know any other way to say thank you.

For all everyone had told Neil about Andrew, the monster, it was inexplicably brave and stupid for Neil to gamble with such dangerous things, but it made Andrew's heart stutter with something a lot more dangerous than fear that he was so willing.

However, kissing Neil in the middle of a crowded airport wasn't wise, and he refused to take it from him without consent, so he decided to continued their game of truths because it was the next best thing.

_You hit me, I hit you back, you hit me again. That's our game isn't it?_

It hurt every time Neil found raw places to prod, and Andrew loved it, especially now that he knew that Neil had always been aiming for what Andrew had been trying to find. It hurt, and it meant he was alive. It reminded him of a song he'd heard at Eden's Twilight.

_Irresistible._

"What was his name?" He asked finally looking away from Neil's reflection to steady his gaze on the real thing. Neil seemed to have gotten lost since he'd been unable to follow Andrew's train of thought, judging by the confusion in his expression. The morning after Neil had taken on Andrew's pain, Neil had given him his true middle name. Not his first, because Neil was named after his father, and that hadn't been a name he wanted to give. Now, Andrew was demanding it. "Your father. What was his name?" He rested his gaze on Neil's face and waited.

_Will you give it to me now?_

Neil instantly looked as though he'd had the breath knocked out of him. Andrew watched as a symphony of emotions flickered through Neil's eyes, and was satisfied with his choice. The real question, was if Neil would tell him the truth or not.

When Neil stepped closer after scanning the area, Andrew knew he would and a jolt of thrill seared through his fingertips.

"Nathan. His name was Nathan." Neil's voice was gravel, and had hitched a bit on the was, but Andrew let it slide as he considered how unfitting the name was for Neil. Possibly because Neil, would always be _Neil_ to Andrew.

"You don't look like a Nathan."

"I'm not." Neil sounded like he was choking on the words, and for a moment, Andrew thought he had lied and was rectifying it, but he continued. "I'm Nathaniel."

Now that was surprising. Neil had just handed Andrew the power to destroy him. He could have left it at Nathan and held on to a shred of his anonymity, but he hadn't. Andrew studied his face, keeping his own schooled into practiced calm, and saw, by the way Neil looked like he might be sick, that Neil also understood exactly what he did.

It was satisfying to see an honest Neil.  _Nathaniel_ , he tested the name, and searched for it on Neil's face, but it was the same as before; no other name would ever feel right. Neil was, and forever would be 'Neil', no matter who he was before. For a small moment, Andrew considered telling him as much, but decided against it and turned away, dragging his gaze with him until it was back outside. The crew had finished packing the cargo chamber and were now working what Andrew assumed were pre-flight checks. He tried not to let anxiety creep back in as the thought of how difficult it might be considering the wind and rain crawled back into his mind.

He felt Neil leave rather than saw, and was annoyed by how much it felt like he was running away, but let it go when he watched Neil's reflection join up with Nicky. Mostly because he needed time to digest everything, probably just as much as Neil needed to, but also because he knew that Neil wasn't actually going to run. A corner of his lip turned up as he turned away from the window and toward the gate, his heart was tripping in an almost lyrical way now that had less to do with fear and more with anticipation. At least now he had a lot to think about on the way to Atlanta.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy long chapter, batman! I'm so sorry it took so long, but switching up how I got inside of Andrew's head WHILE he interacted with Neil was WAY harder than I thought it would be and then it just kept going! I had to cut about 750 words from this, too! They'll be at the start of Chapter 6. Let me know what you think of the change, if you preferred it the other more retrospective way I can always switch back.  
> Oh! The song I referenced is Irresistible by Fall Out Boy (specifically the version with Demi Lovato) 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! ⭐


	6. Vertigo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fear of falling, failing and flying.

Focusing on the nearly non-existent weight and shape of the pen under his sleeve, Andrew boarded the plane the same way he did everything else he dreaded; as if it were the most boring thing in the world. He also made sure to keep Kevin between himself and Neil like a shield, because Neil knew better than to talk over Kevin. Once they were situated, Andrew pulled one of the pens from its sheath and spun it around in his fingers. The weight of it wasn't nearly as reassuring as one of his and Renee's knives would have been, but he was satisfied, at least, to have something to play with. The pens certainly were worth their weight for the horror that had been on every one of the Foxes faces when the metal detector had blazed and blared in protest of Andrew. Only horror, no surprise, and then a collective sigh of relief as he'd produced only a small ballpoint pen and not the blades they were all no doubt expecting. He'd known exactly what would happen, his detached "Oops," had been for nothing more than mere show. Antagonism like that was the Andrew Minyard brand. Sometimes he didn't even know why he did it and he'd had enough speculation from the shrinks before Bee to bother caring anymore. Again and again he twirled it, over and under and then over again like a small baton while he listened to the stewardess go through the safety speech, refusing to meet Neil's questioning glances by keeping his gaze locked on the back of the seat in front of him. Andrew vaguely wondered if it jarred anyone else, the necessity of it. Fury coated his tongue as he realized that not only did they not care, the majority weren't even listening.

  
_You'll all die first if we do crash._

  
He thought the words bitterly as Neil concealed his window by dragging down the blind. The fact that it was probably for his sake had not missed his notice. The fact that Neil seemed to be trying to catch his eye didn't either. Neil's attention was both endearing and annoying. Andrew did not want, nor did he need Neil's concern. But, if he was honest with himself for just a few seconds, he was glad for it in the same way he was glad for the broken bedroom door in the Hemmick house.

Idly, he wondered when Neil had decided that it was his job to take care of Andrew. Somewhere between summer and now, Neil's attitude toward Andrew had shifted from disdain to... whatever this was. The first thought was that it had happened after Neil had found him pinned underneath Drake, that his concern was born out of the exact pity that Andrew had no interest in. Common sense, however, suggested more. It said that it must have happened before that because Neil had knocked down that door to get to him.

To save him.

Andrew had seen it as the paramedics had hauled him out. Splintered wood had littered the floor and the door... the door hung right off the hinges and someone had managed to put a hole right through the middle. It had been a picture of desperation, and in the five seconds it had taken the medics to carry him through, he'd memorized it all. It was not the type of thing someone did for someone they didn't care about. Which was a relief, because if Neil was going to reciprocate his fucked up feelings, Andrew needed them to be genuine. Damaged in the worst way, letting people in, to Andrew was the same as presenting them with the handle of a knife when the tip of blade had already been pressed to the hollow of his throat. It wasn't smart, and since no one was allowed to see the insecurities that pulsed beneath his skin because of how thick he made it seem, a lot of people might even think nothing could hurt him.

Kevin knew a little, the most out of all of the Foxes, but all he saw was the tip of the iceberg through dense fog. He'd been allowed to see the general shape of it when Andrew made him promise to make his life mean something, but he couldn't even fathom the size or how deep it went below the surface. Andrew didn't think he would ever try to either, and was fine with that. Neil, however, had found a way to clear the fog and taken up diving. As a result, Andrew had unknowingly given Neil the blade.

The real question was: "When?"  
When did Neil pull that metaphorical blade away from Andrew's throat and place it against his own? When had Neil decided that Andrew was a person worth fighting for? Worth facing everything he'd ever run from to protect?

Worth giving up a season for. Neil had been willing to give up the season for him. Most days it didn't feel real, what Neil had done for him, what he'd admitted he would do for him. It all boiled back to that question of when. He didn't remember ever being worthy of it. Though that didn't mean much, most days Andrew couldn't even bring himself to feel worthy of the air he breathed. Especially now as he fought to keep his breathing even and tried to figure out if the fear that staked him to the seat had more to do with the ascent of the plane or the hope that flickered in his chest each time he saw Neil's head turn his way.

~

Twenty minutes or so had passed since the plane had leveled out, and to keep himself calm through dips of turbulence, Andrew had been retracing the year since Neil had signed with the foxes, searching for his when. The truth was Andrew didn't think he'd ever be able to pinpoint it, Neil was as hard to read as he was sometimes easy to read. A perfect goddamn contradiction. That was why Neil, Andrew's Neil, and the way that he saw him should have been an effect of the drugs, or at least... the way he made Andrew feel should have been. But even with the drugs gone and out of his system, Neil had this hideous way of filling Andrew with hope and making the gaping hole inside of his chest ache with the need to be filled. A hole that Andrew had given up trying to fill a long, long time ago, now open mouthed and starving, gnashed its teeth angrily at him now every time he looked at Neil. _He's not my answer_ , he kept trying to tell it, but it never listened. Filling a void like that with someone like Neil promised pain. For both of them.

And yet, there Neil was. He looked so different now, the memory of his black hair seemed so out of place now that Andrew had seen the russet brown of Neil's natural color. It made sense against the icy blue of his eyes. This was Neil, no, _Nathaniel_. The name still tasted disgusting, even as a thought. It suggested that someone really would try to take Neil away, to force him back into that name that no longer fit him. The pen nearly bowed between his fingers as he took out his anger at the idea on it and it took physical effort to uncurl his fingers from the pen's slender length and launch it back into motion. Andrew would kill them all if they so much as tried.

Still, he had yet to find that when. Each time he tried, a vibrant memory parted the darkness of his thoughts. Neil's face. Even underneath all the make up Nicky had slathered him in and as he tried to hide under the brim of that incredibly ostentatious cowboy hat, Andrew had been able to tell that he'd been flustered as he asked about Andrew's relationship with Renee. There had been something there. Underneath Neil's attempt at detachment there had been something hungry and wanting. Andrew had brushed it off at the time as a trick of the strobe lights, or the alcohol. Or maybe even the cracker dust as it staved off the pain of his withdrawal, because for a second he had thought Neil had looked at him the same way he looked at an Exy court he couldn't play on. Like he needed Andrew to breathe, or to exist and Andrew was standing just out of his reach despite actually being so close that Neil was floundering with everything he had left just to survive. The worst part was that for that same second, Andrew had wanted to be exactly that. For the rest of the night, Andrew had watched Neil's back from where he sat at the table, drinking to keep sobriety at bay, and wondered for the first time if maybe, someday, he could look at Neil that way, too. That was why he'd decided to trust Neil with the secret of his sexuality, because he'd been hopeful and slightly drunk.

Weeks later, that Neil became a side effect of the drugs because the idea that Andrew misunderstood hurt less than believing it had been real and that he'd allowed himself to be so hurt because his hopefulness had left him so blind. Still, Neil's flustered face stuck with him, because when he'd come back that same Neil had been waiting for him. No, not just waiting, fighting for him. Like no one, not even Cass Spear, ever had. His chest ached still when he thought of her. In the first month of his stay with her, he'd made her life a living hell, but she never gave up. By the third month, Andrew had never felt more loved than he did in her care. She respected his need for space and his need for time to himself, given him a home and learned all she could from what he had been willing to tell. It had been Drake who had ruined it for him in month six. How such a loving person raised such a goddamn monster Andrew never understood, how he seemed to land within reach of so many monsters had always escaped him, too. And it hurt, when he'd forced himself to rebel against her just to get out of Drake's hands. It hurt so much, as he realized that he could never go back now that the monster had been taken care of. If Drake had been killed during deployment he'd have been able to keep Cass and have a family, a mother who loved him. She probably hated him now, hating him probably made Drake's death easier for her to swallow, and he still loved her enough to allow her that small comfort. She was the only person Andrew had ever hugged, the only person he wished would hug him again. However, Cass owed him nothing after all she had done for him and he knew it, especially now. The need to backtrack against his thoughts grew heavy.

Andrew had not missed this part of pure sobriety. He could feel the drag of depression pulling him down. The same dark, tooth-filled cavern that craved Neil yawned and began to swallow him whole if he didn't guard his thoughts carefully. It was an exhaustive process for someone with such a wandering mind. Abby had been concerned about this part of his rehabilitation and had said as much when she'd done the physical upon his return. She'd told him that if he ever needed anything, or to talk, that her door was always open. Andrew didn't doubt it, but he would rather talk to Bee. Abby seemed like the kind of person would would break under the weight Andrew's sorrows, while Bee was a solid rock. It was nothing against Abby, Andrew was positive that she would be a great mother someday when Wymack stopped pussyfooting, maybe even a wonderful mother if she ever learned to bake.

Annoyance flared inside his chest when he again found Neil as the starting point of his out of control thoughts, but it quelled a bit when he again found Neil trying to be lowkey about watching him, always watching him with those lovely pale blue eyes. His brown hair was so stark against his skin in the artificial light. Andrew wondered what Riko had told him he would do if Neil dyed it back that scared him enough to keep it, he knew that it was a constant source of anxiety, even if he didn't notice, Neil kept absently running his fingers through the light brown locks. He knew the risks of keeping it, but had apparently deemed Andrew and the rest of the Foxes worth it, which meant a lot coming from someone more flighty than most birds.

A slight bump made his stomach flip and the turbulence broke Andrew out of his thoughts. Again Neil's eyes darted over. Knowing that Neil was worried about him helped because it gave him extra motivation to hold on to the facade of being fine. Inwardly he sneered, because really, Neil would know all about that, wouldn't he? Still each time the turbulence made the plane dip, Andrew's stomach swiftly followed and it took a bit more than gripping the pen in his hand to keep it from shaking.

_We're fine. They're fine. I'm fine._

The percentage in his head rose two extra points this time he caught Neil watching him, and Andrew contemplated switching seats with Kevin so he could see how far he could bury the pen into Neil's jugular before he bled out all over the thinly carpeted floor beneath their feet, but the thought didn't satisfy him the way he had thought it would. It should have given him a sick sense of satisfaction knowing he was powerful enough to do it if he so pleased, but it didn't. Usually would have, and he suspected it would if it had been anyone else. In all actuality, imagining Neil bleeding out gave him an acidic sense of preempted pain, the kind that felt like he'd been impaled right though the center of his chest, making it hard to breathe. Like _he_ was the one who was actually bleeding out. Andrew decided right then and there that Neil was not allowed to die. Not by his hand. Not ever.

Luckily, the pilot's voice announced their arrival in Atlanta, and spared Andrew from the way his thoughts had careened toward Neil. Again. Instead, he focused on staying calm as his stomach rose up in his throat through the plane's decent.

~

Jelly legs were the worst. After every flight, no matter how short, Andrew's body always needed time to adjust to being on the ground again. The sensation of floating followed him, each step felt like a twisted moon walk as they killed their hour long Atlanta layover and it was nauseating. The Atlanta airport was the same as the one in South Carolina, bursting with shops, food, people, and emotions wherever you looked. Nicky led their group, _The Monsters,_ as they'd been dubbed by the upperclassmen, through shops full of crappy and overpriced souvenirs and mountainous piles of t-shirts that screamed "GEORGIA" and "ATL" in large graffiti letters. The trek through each shop wasn't complete until at least one of them held up the most hideous shirt they found and made a face.

The war against his stomach had finally become too much for him after they passed a small cafe. The scent of cinnamon and apples wrapped around his entire being and refused to let go even after the rest of the group had continued walking. That scent evoked awful things and before he had time to realize why, he had slipped into a large bathroom where he threw himself into a stall and heaved up the remainder of the meager lunch he'd eaten in the dorms before leaving Palmetto. The familiarity of the situation brought back unwanted memories of his stay at Easthaven, and the scent, apple pie, had thrown him back into the clutches of Drake.

Thinking about Neil when he was miserable had become a habit, and it was no different now as he fought to keep himself upright enough to avoid kneeling on a disgusting public bathroom floor and sane enough to avoid awful memories. The memory of Neil he evoked now was from that night at the Hemmick house. When Neil had gently guided him forward so he wouldn't choke. It was an important memory. Neil had touched him and not only had he allowed it, he'd taken comfort in it. Neil's hand had stayed on his back and moved in a slow, reassuring motion as Andrew had emptied his stomach all over the Hemmick's guest bedroom floor. He imagined Neil doing that again now. It was a dangerous thing, to fantasize like this and he knew that, but each time imaginary Neil's hand moved along his spine, fingers dragging lazily over his shoulder blades, Andrew's breathing steadied a bit more, and the threat of the Drake and Easthaven memories faded until he was able to stand without having to cling to the flimsy bathroom stall wall. Once he could stand and breathe, Andrew stared at his reflection, as he raked wet hands through his hair. He knew he'd have to talk to Bee about it sooner or later, preferably sooner, before it could fester anymore. After rinsing out his mouth with four handfuls of cool water, he left the bathroom and got swallowed up in the crowd.

He'd been looking for a shop that might sell toothbrushes and toothpaste when he passed the shimmering glass case. The bitter taste in his mouth was forgotten when the tiny sparkling contents of the case reminded him of Bee again and in relation, how much he missed her. Andrew hadn't seen Bee since the day she had taken him to Easthaven, not because Andrew hadn't wanted to, but because he hadn't yet decided what to tell her. Now that he knew Riko had been involved with Proust, telling her the truth about what happened there was probably an awful idea. Andrew knew that, despite her calm and seemingly timid nature, she would fight tooth and nail to make it as right as she could and Andrew didn't think she'd settle with a warning of danger. With Riko heading the situation, telling her the truth could be like letting her sign her own death warrant. Andrew didn't like the idea of lying to her, but he liked the idea of her murder even less and decided that he'd make it up to her, which was exactly why he'd stared at no less than fifty dazzling little animals until he'd found just the perfect one.

A Fox.

~

The sky still looked angry and condemning but the rain had stopped by the time they boarded for Texas. With one less thing to worry about, and his pen in hand, Andrew spent the flight running through everything he knew about the University of Texas Longhorns and how each of them usually played, if only to keep his mind away from Neil, and as he ran through stats thanked his lucky stars that no one could read his mind.

Especially Kevin and Neil.

For those two, Exy was life, if they had a court to play on they could be happy no matter who was breathing down their necks. Well, Neil was happy, nothing seemed to satisfy Kevin but he'd die if he couldn't play. Neil wanted to play because he didn't have to worry about anything on the court, it was an escape from his messed up life. Kevin, on the other hand, had been raised to love it, Exy _was_ his messed up life. He'd been brainwashed into believing it was the only thing that mattered, but he wasn't allowed to be the best, even if he was.

Andrew though, had been shoved into a goal as a reward to get out of his cell. All logic applied Exy should have become for him exactly what it was for everyone else, an escape, a bright place in an otherwise bleak world, but even though he was good at it, the spark had never caught. However, wood could never burn if you kept dumping water on it either.

Allowing himself to have something to cherish was foreign territory for Andrew. He'd been so used to stamping out those desires the second they developed. Now that he had it, and the chance to really turn it into something, he didn't know how to stop pushing it away. It hurt him more than it did Kevin every time he'd told him no, and he was the only one who knew it. Andrew wanted to love Exy with the ferocity Neil and Kevin did, but he didn't know how to _let_ himself. It was the same thing that made him fear the idea of letting Neil get close. Who wanted something wonderful when they knew they'd just end up ruining it or throwing away? Kevin told Andrew that he could be Court ranked someday when he'd tried to recruit him. That he'd make him something not to be feared, but admired, and Andrew had wanted it. He wanted people in the stands to wear his jersey, to scream euphorically when his name was called for the line up or when he pointed his stick towards the stands. For the stadium to explode and ring with cheers when he defended his goal, but that wasn't who Andrew was. And how could Kevin model him into that person when he himself was so content wearing that damn number two? Kevin didn't even believe in himself, how could he believe in Andrew?

Andrew was a problem. Headlines from his past might as well be plastered on his jersey instead of his name and number because that was all anyone, even his team mates, ever saw. He hated that he knew he was the only one he could blame, and yet... he couldn't stop. Letting himself have something he wanted at the risk of ruining it was hard enough. Wanting it when others didn't seem to want him to have it either only made the struggle against himself harder. He always found some way to blame everyone else. It wasn't wrong, but it wasn't right either, and he could go around in circles all day trying to figure out who was more wrong and never find an answer. He wanted to be part of the team, but he knew how they saw him. How afraid they were that he would snap and kill them all. _They didn't even know how capable of murder he was_.

He'd had the audacity to hope they might finally understand after finding out about Drake. But the fact of it was too many people were simply content to believe that Andrew was a monster without ever truly trying to understand, even when proof of otherwise was now under federal investigation, and there came a point where he was equally contented to believe them and even embrace it as a means to protect himself. That was why he'd started cutting them off at the knees during practice his first day back. To remind them of the power he held on the court, that it was also his and how easily he could help or harm them. Had Neil not come to him and eased the nameless frustration that ate at him by proving he understood it and emphasizing the fact that Andrew was also part of the team, Andrew probably would have done something foolish, like quit. To be understood like that saved him from himself that day. It had been like receiving salvation and damnation at the same time, it filled him with both thrill and fear. That night as he stared up at the ceiling, fighting sleep, he'd let himself think the words, " _I want this_."

  
Whether he meant Exy or Neil he had no idea. Maybe ' _this_ ' was a concept. Maybe ' _this_ ' wasn't a thing that could be grasped, but a feeling. What ever it was, he still wanted it but the sensation was like a guttering candle, it flickered, smothered by the effort. That was the deadness inside of him and he knew it, years and years of craving nothingness had made him forget how to focus on _something_. The real burn he needed lay in the words, " _I want to want this. I need to want this_."

He risked a glance at Neil who was staring out the window. His expression was calm, but Andrew had watched him enough to know by the way the corners of his mouth twitched, that he was daydreaming. Probably about Exy. It was always about Exy. Neil the Raccoon's shiny object. Exy might end up getting him killed but at least he was happy. If Neil was a raccoon, Andrew mused as he leaned his head back, then perhaps he would be a badger, holed up all alone and chasing away anyone who tried to get close to his little burrow. Yet Neil and Kevin kept trying no matter how he snarled and clawed at them. They never gave up on him, though he suspected that Kevin might be close, Neil seemed to have a lot of misdirected faith. That faith made him want to be better. Andrew was strict in his belief that he owed no one anything, but maybe, just maybe, he owed both of them a little bit of effort on the court.

 _Oh god, I really do want this_.  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm crying rainbows ⭐I hope you are too.


	7. King

Murder hadn't been the last thing on Andrew's mind when he and the rest of the Foxes landed in Texas, but it hadn't been the first either. All through dinner, his own heightened expectations for himself pressed down on him alongside gravity. Most people had stopped expecting things from him a long time ago, and the only thing he expected from himself was that no one ever got the satisfaction of watching him hurt because of it. Though, wanting something and believing you could have it were two incredibly different things. One was simple and lacked risk of failure, the other required a sturdy sense of self-worth. Both of those things were difficult for Andrew, no matter how easy they both may seem.

During dinner, he had torn his garlic bread into little pieces as he thought about the game later that night and willed his legs to return to solid things before first serve. It would be Andrew's first game officially sober, and it was a pretty daunting thing when he thought about it. Which was exactly why he had been trying not to. Kevin expected tonight to be his big breakthrough, Neil probably had a similar hope. The rest, he knew as he glanced around the table and watched the upperclassmen laugh at a joke he hadn't heard, probably couldn't care less. But when he put Neil and Kevin's expectations together with his own decision to try harder, the pressure felt real. And suffocating. He'd lost his appetite and spent the rest of the meal pushing pasta and pulverized chicken around his plate.

Andrew had no misconceptions. He knew this game wasn't going to be some eye opening experience. Like with anything, he'd have to fall in love with the game slowly, carefully, if he was even capable of loving anything at all. He wasn't going to block a striker out of his goal and suddenly be obsessed with the game. He _was_ , however, intent on blocking as many strikers as he could, for himself, for Neil and his stupid restless face that, even with their feet on the ground, still found some reason to be turned toward him. Anticipation, nerves, and something warmer, all things that he'd never experienced before, overtook him. That foolish hope started burning in his chest once again.

_I want this._

_Don't get scared._

_Don't back down._

~

The chaos of a game night warred between being thrilling and obnoxious, the chaos of an away game always leaned more towards a thrill for Andrew because of his instigator's heart. Animosity becomes a fun thing to play with after you get used to being hated, and animosity is always thick enough to cut in a crowd when a team sets foot on another home turf. Nothing could energize Andrew more than the possibility of a fight and the crowd that parted around the bus as they crawled to a stop in the UT parking lot was so restless with that turbulent energy that could spark and combust at any moment that Andrew's fingertips tingled with it.

Pulling into an already crowded parking lot and seeing Fox colors stand out inside a sea of the home team's always left a satisfying hum in Andrew's chest because whether anyone, even himself, liked it or not, he was a part of who they were rooting for. Tonight, however, Fox fans were harder to spot. Orange and white were apparently popular school colors, and the entire crowd was an undulating mass of black, orange and white. The only indication of who fans were rooting for lie in the appearance of fox paws and bold print PALMETTOs or steer heads and TEXAS t-shirts. Since this was an away game for the Foxes there were far more Longhorn fans but he saw just enough fox paws floating through the crowd as they followed security into to the locker rooms that the satisfaction remained the same. Anticipation followed as the doors clanged shut behind them. His face betrayed nothing, but if someone were to press their fingers to the inside of his wrist they would feel it fluttering underneath his desperately slashed scars.

Andrew's anticipation melted entirely after warm ups, and murder came to the forefront of his mind as he and the rest of the team noticed the Edgar Allen Ravens in the stands. Dark clothes and small cheek tattoos that were glaringly obvious even at such a distance. They were unmistakable, and if they weren't, then the bodyguard scanning the crowd would have given them away.

It wasn't so much the initial sight of Riko's cocky ass smirk that made Andrew's palms ache for the weight of the knives he'd left in a drawer back at Fox Tower as it was the way Neil had reacted to seeing it.

All of the color had drained out of his face in a way Andrew hadn't seen since he'd been handed his cell phone and had a full blown panic attack in the center square of the mall. The snap of Wymack's fingers had made him flinch as if he'd been shot and caused a sick phantom pain to lick against Andrew's wrists as he remembered each and every one of Neil's new wounds. Neil had gone to Edgar Allen on Andrew's behalf and come back broken and even more scarred than he had been before.

From the moment Neil had picked him up from Easthaven he had winced in pain every time he moved. Even now Neil was in pain, and Andrew would not soon forget or forgive how Neil had suffered, or that he hadn't been able to stay true to his promises and protect him. He wouldn't forget that Riko had made sure he wouldn't be there to. No matter what Neil said about his promises Andrew felt like he broke his now more than ever. Neil wasn't afraid of him, but he was afraid of Riko, the nasty implications of why hung darkly over Andrew's head.

_Just what did he do to him?_

The ideas his head conjured were too much. Andrew was seeing the torn opalescent skin and bruises shaped like fingerprints, clean slices that pulsed blood and jagged ones that oozed as he revisited all the pain he knew Neil must have endured. It was made worse by the fact that he had only seen Neil's chest, arms and face. What would he find if he looked further? Neil's back, his legs, his... No.

  
Neil hadn't told any of them exactly what Riko had done to him, all they knew was that it was enough to scare him into keeping his appearance for fear that Riko retaliate against them all, and that he'd been tortured at Riko's discretion, but it didn't matter anymore. All of Andrew's perfectly practiced control was slipping away like the last grains of sand in an hour glass. Riko's time officially ran out when Kevin's face, just as pale as Neil's, came into his line of vision.

Fuck knives. A racquet. His bare hands. It didn't matter. It would be enough. Andrew would claw Riko's cruel little heart out with his nails right here.

All eyes were on Kevin and Neil so thankfully no one noticed when Andrew's hands started trembling. He'd gotten jitters before he killed Aaron's mother, too. It had only made his act of being Aaron more convincing since Aaron had been hopped up on so many of his mother's drugs at that point it had been a miracle he'd been able to function at all. Andrew knew that it would wear off soon and give way to a deathly calm as he handed himself over to the blackness that was always lurking inside a cavity that Andrew suspected used to hold his heart and let it overtake him. That was how it had gone when he'd taken out those four guys outside of Eden's Twilight. He didn't remember anything except the before (Nicky pinned to the wall and being surrounded by four men and the distinct sound of Nicky saying, "No.") and the after (All four of those men lying in pools of their own blood while Nicky wept somewhere out of sight). All that was in between was _nothing_.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered if Neil would visit him in prison after he strangled Riko with his own intestines, and then he wondered if he'd even live to see the prison sentence since this was Riko he was about to murder.

Someone, probably Matt, said, "What is he doing here?" and Andrew had his opening.

"I'll ask." he said coolly as he started toward the door that would lead him across the court, but Wymack had caught the back of his gear with a barely convincing, "You're not allowed to kill anyone the first game of the season." and dragged him back.

Wymack wanted that little prick dead as much as Andrew did and Andrew knew it. Unlike Andrew, Wymack had never learned how to guard his eyes.

His blood was roaring in his ears as he stood listening to Neil doing all he knew how to do; pretending to be fine.  
He wanted to scream at him, to shake him or kiss him and slap him until he admitted that he was not fine, that he needed all of them, until he believed in the promises Andrew had made in the locker room the year before.

_"Your parents are dead, you are not fine and nothing is going to be okay. This is not news to you. But from now on until May you are still Neil Josten and I am still the man who said he would keep you alive. I don't care if you use this phone tomorrow. I don't care if you never use it again. But you are going to keep it on you because one day you might need it."_

_At that point, Neil had simply looked lost. The ringtone they now shared, taking a new, physical form. His contact brown eyes had been filled with uncertainty and pain. Andrew had to fight the urge to shake him._

Listen to me.

_Neil had kept looking away, most likely because Andrew had just stripped him of every lie he'd ever tried to sell everyone in two simple sentences. Andrew understood because the same thing had happened to him when he'd met Bee. It felt like having your skin peeled off slowly, because that's exactly what it was. Lies become your armor. After you tell enough of them, you start to believe them yourself._

_Andrew hooked his finger under Neil's chin to bring his attention back to him, to make sure he was listening, to make sure that he could see the honesty in Andrew's eyes._

Look at me.

 _The action alone was so intimate that it had changed the tone of the conversation. Somehow Andrew had been surprised by the light stubble on Neil's chin, and how coarse it was against his finger, and had to resist brushing his knuckle over it again because it was unbelievable sexy. He had to tuck his thumb inside his fist to avoid resting it on Neil's jaw._ _The way the volume of his voice had dipped after he'd done it was entirely unintentional, as was the way he'd leaned forward before continuing, he felt far too gentle._

_The confrontation had gone from, 'Keep the phone.' to 'Hey, you have me.' and in that moment Andrew had been alright with that, even if it had set every single one of his boundaries on fire._

_It took more effort than Andrew would ever admit to drag his attention back to the matter at hand, or rather the matter in Neil's hand. The cellphone that could save his life._

_"On that day you are not going to run." Though his voice was low, the intensity of it was rough. "You're going to think about what I promised you and you're going to make the call. Tell me you understand."_

_Neil's lips had trembled as he tried to form a response, but he came back wordless and only nodded. Andrew had been satisfied knowing that even as he pulled his fingers away from Neil's chin, he was under Neil's skin, that he'd rendered him speechless. It made the dark and possessive part of him crow with pride, because in that moment it felt like he owned Neil._

_Ordinarily Andrew would have called it payback, but he knew that Neil was still crawling under his as he found himself watching Neil's lips, more than vaguely wondering how they might taste, how easily he could lean forward and find out. Hell, he had been close enough to feel the warmth of each one of Neil's ragged breaths the entire time. He imagined stealing away Neil's pain and fear and sharing his own with a kiss that could shatter the world around them both, Kevin waiting in the lobby be damned, but when Neil had looked at him again, Andrew lost his nerve._

_In reality he did not own Neil, and he did not want to. Kissing Neil then would have been taking advantage of Neil's vulnerability and doing that would have made him want to slice his own throat open. So Andrew sighed and pulled away, because if he was ever going to kiss Neil, Neil had to want it too. He was an asshole, and several other deplorable things, but Andrew was not a monster. He would not be like them, even if the missed opportunity had made him ache with want for days afterward._

Neil's face hadn't regained its color yet, each of his bruises stood out starkly, and his gaze seemed to be magnetized to that black hole of Ravens in the crowd. Andrew didn't know why the Ravens were there any more than the rest of them did, but he knew that he would keep his promise and die here if he had to in order to keep Neil and Kevin out of that bastard's grip. All it took was one glance from Riko in Neil's direction and Andrew was across the huddle. He was surprised no one grabbed at him for the quickness of it as he took up a post on Neil's left side and glared up into the stands.

He willed Neil to remember his words,

_"The next time someone comes for you, stand down and let me handle it."_

Neil's response echoed in his head and ached in his chest.

_"If it means losing you, then no."_

Now on his right, Neil said something about how Beckstein was a foot taller than him to Kevin. He was wrong, and probably knew it being the junkie he was, but whatever he'd been trying to do worked, because Neil now had Kevin's attention. It was a perfect time to get both of their attention, even if he knew he'd regret it later when it came down to Kevin.

"Eight inches. He's only five-eleven." He said just as Kevin had opened his mouth to correct Neil. It was an offhand thing, but the look on Neil, Kevin, and Wymack's faces showed that they understood. Not only did they understand, now he had Neil distracted and focused on him instead of Riko.

"How tall is Lakes?" Neil asked.

"Look it up,"  
  
_Look at me._

Color was returning to Neil's face now.

"Humor me just this once."

Andrew could have laughed. Just this once his ass. Neil had been exploiting this weakness since he'd shown up, he'd have to work for it.

Andrew moved.

Neil followed.

He always followed.

Now Neil's back was to Riko. He didn't think Neil realized just quite what Andrew had done. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the way Riko's face soured.

_That's right, fucker. He is mine._

Neil leaned forward and tangled his fingers in the net of Andrew's racquet to keep him from going any further. The action alone was sexy, but Neil's determined eyes and how intent on him they were was even sexier. "How tall is she?"

_This is exactly why I hate you._

Neil got inside of Andrew's head and played with all of the controls until he was on the verge of forgetting what was really important. The worst part was that Andrew wasn't sure if Neil knew he was doing it.  
  
"Five-six?" Matt guessed.  
It was annoying that their own backliner didn't know. It felt like he should, until Andrew realized that that Matt really had no reason to know the other backliner's heights because they should never meet on the court. Andrew only knew because he remembered everything he heard Wymack say.

"Five-eight."

Those two words transformed Neil's face like some kind of magic spell. The light flew back into his eyes and burned there like an icy fire and his smile... Neil never smiled, not like this. It was a fierce thing, just as dangerous as it was beautiful. It reminded Andrew of his knives with their precision and cold edges. That was a smile that could cause pain, but also raise life from slumbering ashes. That was exactly what it did to Andrew.

He wanted those lips so desperately in that moment that the rest of the team and the world melted away for a second and all that was before and around him was Neil before it all came crashing back courtesy of a roar from the crowd as the Longhorn's mascot made rounds behind them. He loosed a breath and rolled his head around his shoulders to regain his focus.

First and foremost, his attention belonged on Kevin and Neil and keeping them safe. Secondly, the game, because whether Riko was up in the stands or not, this was not a game they could afford to lose if they were going to make it to the championships so they could shove Riko's precious sport down his throat. Thinking about Neil's lips could wait until all the Foxes were safe and back at home. He pulled his helmet on and bit the inside of his cheek.

It didn't feel different, but at the same time it did.

 _I want this._  
  
Coach's voice jarred him back to reality again.

"Andrew, keep the score at three or under for your half and I'll buy you as much alcohol as will fit in your cabinet."

No one could see his face well enough with his helmet on so he allowed the corners of his mouth to twitch. Having an added incentive never hurt since he was running low on Jack anyway. He'd do one better and only allow two. Andrew didn't answer, he'd simply slung his racquet over his shoulders and sauntered onto the court like he owned it.

Fake it 'til you make it, wasn't that what idiots who wanted things said? Andrew was the king of faking it.

~

If animosity had been what Andrew showed up in Texas to find he would not have been disappointed. Between the appearance of the Edgar Allen Ravens and the dirty way the Longhorns played, Andrew practically buzzed with it through both halves.

You knew it was dirty on the field when Dan was the first one to get punched, but it had only gotten worse from there. It hadn't been fun, but Andrew had done exactly what he set out to do and that was victory enough when the final buzzer sounded on the Foxes favor.

His shoulders, back, and arms ached from deflecting the Longhorns' fierce strikers so many times and twisting his body in ways he hadn't known possible in order to keep his promise of only two for his half. He was thankful for the fatigue, however. It would make the plane trip back to South Carolina easier to endure if he lacked the energy to be tense.

To their credit, neither Neil or Kevin asked him about the game, but that could have been because they had both gotten cornered by the press and the mood had gone south from there.

Andrew had stood just out of the camera's shot as Dan and Kevin answered questions and accepted congratulations for their win. As long as Riko was in the same building Kevin could not be left alone or he would have a meltdown, so Andrew stayed close, his own personal bodyguard. 

Neil had the opportunity to ignore the press, and should have now that his appearance was a beacon for death, but he'd simply looked to Andrew. His eyes had aske _d, Will this make your job harder?_ And Andrew had dismissed him with a nonchalant, _Like you fucking care, do what you want._

The silent communication between them had felt electric.

"Rumor has it you've been invited to the perfect Court."

The words made Andrew sick. The perfect Court was a fantasy in Riko's head, an imaginary thing built by Tetsuji Moriyama's psychotic parenting style. Andrew was fucked up, but he would never be Moriyama fucked up.

So Andrew waited for Neil's answer with bated breath. Neil had said that he'd come back, but he'd never told Andrew that he wouldn't go again. To join the Raven's would be an enormous opportunity for a junkie like Neil, and Andrew wanted desperately to believe that he wouldn't be stupid enough to do it, but then Neil peeled the bandage away from his sweat soaked skin and Andrew's heart sank as the cameras moved in to get a good shot of the number four just below Neil's left eye.  
  
_Of course he'll do it. I'm an idiot for thinking he'd stay. No one stays._  
  
The anger that swallowed him was a black thing, he hadn't felt such an anger since the day he'd blacked out and nearly killed the guys who had jumped Nicky, but then Neil smiled for the cameras.

It was like clouds parting after a rainfall, or a light that chased away all shadows. It was understanding so deep that it hurt.

That smile said _charisma_ to everyone who didn't know better but whispered _murder_ to anyone who had spent days memorizing his face. It was the same smile Neil had smiled when Andrew had given Neil the girl's height before the game. Andrew's chest flared with white hot pride.

 _He's going to get us all killed, but at least he's not accepting that four, and he's not running._  
  
Neil dragging Riko politely through the mud was the most amusing thing Andrew had ever seen and he had seen Nicky try to play a video game while completely hammered. Dan apparently thought it was something, too. She'd covered her mouth and sidestepped away from the cameras so she could laugh silently while leaning on Matt for support. Kevin had gone white but was desperately clinging to his composure while the cameras were still rolling. That was to be expected. He'd been the same when Riko had shown up unexpectedly on Kathy's show, too.

When Neil was done ripping Riko to shreds, the Foxes headed to the locker rooms where Aaron and the rest of the team waited followed only by the sound of Dan's laughter. She was a busybody and often stuck her nose where it didn't belong, but at least she knew hilarious when she saw it.

As expected, Kevin started bitching the second the door swung closed behind them and they were out of ear shot of the press. His fear of Riko ruled him to the core, not that Andrew could blame him. His broken hand and Seth's death were daily reminders of how smart fearing Riko was, so Andrew wasn't about to tell him otherwise and walked beside both of them in silence.

Unexpectedly, Neil slammed Kevin against the wall so hard that Andrew was sure it had knocked the breath out of him for a moment.

That was interesting.

Andrew stepped aside. Those two could handle their own internal battles without any of his help. He was only promising to fight the outside threats. Plus, seeing Neil lose his temper was something Andrew had not yet had the privilege of, not really, and he was curious. He wondered, as Neil railed on in French, if this was a just little outburst or if this was Neil completely unhinged. He'd never seen Neil look so angry before, nor had he realized just how strong he was.

Kevin was considerably bigger than Neil, but it had taken nearly no effort at all for him to completely derail him. The look of shock on Kevin's face as he careened into the wall had suggested that he'd been thinking something similar. At one point in their argument Kevin had met his gaze for just a second, but his expression had been unreadable. If he'd been asking for help, Andrew would have known. If he'd had to place a name to the look in Kevin's eyes he'd have called it shame.

~

The flights back to South Carolina were hell. Every few minutes or so fatigue threatened to lull Andrew to sleep and just as he was about to succumb turbulence would rock the plane and send him into groggy panic.

Thankfully, after approximately three long hours of in air travel and a forty minute layover in Atlanta, they arrived at Upstate International and one by one the tired Foxes had grumbled and filed onto the bus. Andrew fell asleep as soon as he closed his eyes after settling in his seat.

"Andrew," The voice was Renee's. "Wake up, we're home."

He stirred. Not many had the talent of waking him without startling him into violence, but Renee did because she knew how to do it without touching him. She smiled tiredly when he opened his eyes.

The reason he was able to tolerate Renee was the fact that she understood him the most. She knew what it was to be raped, to be abused, and to have blood that you didn't regret on your hands. Andrew had never told Renee of his suffering, only that he understood and she had never pried for more. She'd simply taken what he'd given and been happy with it. She let him talk when he was ready and accepted his silence when he was not. If more people could be like Renee, the world would be a much better place, or at least it would have more people Andrew was capable of tolerating.

He shifted to glance out the window, the rest of the Foxes were already outside and unpacking the gear into the parking lot.

"I was talking to Dan and Allison on the ride back," Renee started.

Andrew knew she had a point, so he simply stared at her until she continued.

"Though what Neil said about Riko was funny and true, there are bound to be repercussions. Riko will probably not take this lightly and after Seth..." She trailed off and glanced over her shoulder. Andrew knew she was looking for Allison, and rightfully so. They all knew now that Riko had been responsible for Seth's death, but Allison did not need to hear them talking about it so freely.

"Get to the point." he said blankly, tired and running out of patience.

"Do you wish for me to take him? It's bound to get even messier from here, you don't need to get involved."

"I'm already involved since I have Kevin. Besides, I wouldn't wish Neil on anyone but a mortician. He seems to have an ongoing death wish." He really didn't, Neil was just as afraid as Kevin was, he was just stunningly reckless about proving that his fear didn't own him.

Renee's knowing smile cut him through to the bone. He knew she did that on purpose, like him she could read people like books, and she was reading him thoroughly.

"Stop that or I will make you regret letting me keep those knives."

Her hair bounced around her face as she moved backward through the aisle and passed the seats, how she had so much energy at four in the morning was beyond him.

"You don't have them right now." She said with a grin before disappearing through the open bus doors.

Actually, there was one strapped to the bottom of his bus seat, but she didn't need to know that.

~

Back at the dorm, Andrew slid the window open as everyone started filing off to bed. He shook a cigarette into his waiting fingers and lit it while the cold January air blew passed him and into the dorm living room. Instantly it cleared his head, aided only by the smoke that snaked up from the cherry of his cigarette.

Kevin tried to ask about the game, but Andrew only had to hold up his hand in the universal symbol of 'not now' for him to understand. Kevin had sighed and turned on his heel for the bedroom.

In retrospect, allowing Neil to taunt Riko so publicly seemed like an awful idea and though his bones ached for sleep in a way they hadn't in months, now, he was reluctant to let it take him.

Neil was two dorms down the hall. It was very likely that if something happened to him while Andrew slept, he would never hear it.

With his cigarette in one hand and his cell phone in the other, he pulled up Neil's contact information. If he texted him now, he might still be awake, but what would Andrew say?

 _'I'm worried about you, come sleep on our couch.'_  
_'You're an idiot and I need to see you right now.'_  
_'I hate you.'_  
  
Andrew had typed out each message and then held the back button and watched the words disappear before tossing the phone to the couch. Neil was with Matt, and safe.  
  
_He's safe, he's safe, he's safe._

He repeated the words in his head until he nearly believed them and tossed his cigarette butt out the window. It landed two stories down with a spray of glowing ashes. He pulled the window closed and rested his head against it, looking into the cold, dead eyes of his reflection as his breath fogged up the glass. There were no words in his head anymore, just shapeless emotions that he couldn't seem to grasp.  
  
_Something is very wrong with me._

His nightmares were tangled with Neil that night.  
His lips, his scars, his eyes. The dream changed rapidly, and was flashes of multiple dreams at once. Kissing Neil, hating Neil, Riko's sneer, wanting Neil, Riko torturing Neil. There, the nightmare stuck.

At some point, Andrew had become Riko and instead of being forced to watch, he was the one cutting Neil open. Neil screamed as he drew his most wicked looking blade over his back and watched blood well up under the tip of the steel and turn into rose petal pools. Andrew cut straight down to muscle until the corners of Neil's skin curled up like a well worn book page. Screamed as Andrew started tearing his skin from his flesh. When Andrew was done, he hung Neil's skin on the wall for all to see, Neil's pained cries only stopped as he died, naked and skinless, on the floor. Beside him, Aaron, Nicky and Cass Spear were dying too. On the wall below the twisted thing that used to be Neil's skin, Andrew had written using the blood that had been on his hands, Neil's blood.

_THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO THE THINGS I LOVE._

In the morning, he woke with a start to the sound of shattering glass and his blood turned to ice in his veins as the ghost of Neil's scream rang in his ears.  
A single thought crossed his mind.

 _Neil_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took so long~ but here it is! And I'm bouncing for the next chapters because it only gets better from here. ⭐


	8. Monster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI GUYS!  
> I know it's been forever so I've decided to split this chapter in two since it's taking forever!  
> Surprise!  
> ❤  
> I also want to tell you all how grateful I am for you guys! You're the best and I love writing for you guys, hang in there and I promise I will make it worth it. ❤⭐ Enjoy!

Blood pounded in Andrew's ears like drums as he pulled his bands up over his arms. He didn't remember getting out of bed and dressed, but he was sure that it hadn't been that long since he'd heard the faint sound of shattering glass coming from somewhere on the campus grounds. He took an extra second to slip his knives inside the bands and had been tucking a few more into his pockets when his phone vibrated and shifted on the top of the dresser. The icy fear that had lodged itself inside his chest since his eyes had snapped open spiked out into every single one of his veins as he reached for it. Andrew knew very well that it could be Neil's call for help.

It wasn't.

Instead, it was Wymack, his text was simple, but entirely capitalized.  
  
'DON'T KILL ANYONE'  
  
A few seconds later, another text blipped onto the screen, and three other phones chimed in staggered response.

'VANDALS AGAIN'

_He's fine._

The fight ran out of Andrew with an exhaled breath, he hadn't realized how tightly he had coiled himself until he had already been unwound. Neil was fine, probably even still sleeping just like Kevin, Nicky and Aaron still were. They had all slept straight through the mismatched symphony as the texts had come in, and if Andrew knew Neil at all, his phone probably wasn't even on. He didn't need to see the texts to know that they were all from Wymack and that the message was the same two words he'd received last.

They didn't get the first because the rest of the team didn't need a reminder not to murder anyone.

It took quite a while for his heart send Wymack's message to his head despite the fact that his blood was racing under his skin. From the moment he had started awake, it had been as if his heart had been _trying_ to burst inside his chest.

Just the thought of Neil being the newest target of Riko's sick revenge dance was like taking a dose of adrenaline straight into his bloodstream. Not having an outlet for it was nearly painful. Andrew's thoughts felt muddy and thick and the effort to restrain himself from punching the wall or throwing his phone just to rid himself of the restless energy that pulsed through his veins with each erratic beat of his heart was almost too much. Knowing Neil was fine wasn't the same as seeing him being fine. Especially after that nightmare.

_He's fine, he's fine, he's fine._

Another curse of his gift of perfect recall was that he hardly ever had the privilege of forgetting the hell that his head created while he slept. The most haunting things about that particular nightmare was how real it had felt and that for the first time since he could remember, it wasn't Andrew being hurt.

Andrew stared at his hands now, and could recall the too sticky feel of Neil's blood as it dried, the resistance of his skin as he peeled it away from muscle and the rest of his flesh, and Neil's pained screams as the knife sank into his flesh and how satisfied he'd felt when he'd done it. By the time he left the room he couldn't remember if he'd put the extra knives back in the drawer. A quick pat down of his pockets revealed that he had not. Against his better judgment, he decided to keep them.

As he entered the bathroom, he pressed two fingers to the side of his throat, just under his jaw.

 _Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump_ , his pulse answered as he stared into the mirror, though his expression was blank, his heart was still racing.

The florescent light amplified the fairness of his hair just as much as it did the shadows in his face. The contrast was startling. The shadows lingered in and under his eyes like ghosts of bruises. If he touched his face he could almost feel them. For a moment, he was thirteen years old, looking over the damage Drake had left when he'd slammed Andrew's head into the floor and held his face viciously against the carpet as he had his way for the very first time.

 _He felt dirty, but he was already used to that, and couldn't wait to get into the shower and scrub himself raw in places that already ached and burned._  
_"When they get back, you'll tell them that you fell," Drake had been big even back then, with his arms crossed across his broad chest and his smug smirk, he'd radiated power. For a boy who had always been small like Andrew, he was terrifying. "Won't you?"_  
_The threat was there, it was in the upraised veins on Drake's knuckles and the lopsided way his pants hung on his hips, and Andrew had been afraid. He could see the fear on his face out of the corner of his eye and he knew that Drake could see it too._  
_So Andrew nodded, he would tell Cass and Richard that he fell because if he told the truth he didn't doubt for a second that he'd find those meaty hands around his neck._  
_"Good boy, A.J." Drake purred as he left his position in the doorway._  
_Andrew had decided then that he'd never give anyone the satisfaction of seeing him so afraid ever again._  
_And he hadn't._

It never ceased to amaze him just how far he'd come, especially now as he gazed into his own eyes. Once, he'd been that scared kid, all alone in a world that had been cruel right from the very start, and here he was now: Still scared, always scared, but painted together with courageous lies while his pulse, his only proof that he had indeed survived, beat the truth against his fingertips. He'd learned early on that the cruel people have all of the power. So that was exactly what Andrew had forced himself to become. In the process he'd turned into a monster by fooling even himself into believing that he enjoyed being cruel, but no one could hurt him anymore and that was all that mattered. Wasn't it?

This was Andrew's biggest secret, his best weapon, and his armor, all rolled into one. It took a lot of mistakes to learn how to keep this mask up. He'd learned this trick far too late and as a result his mind was like an upended house; nothing was where it should be, things were missing, and everything was a mess. Then Neil had come along, and he'd started cleaning. The first thing Neil had done was picked up a lamp. He'd replaced the shattered bulb, plugged it in and allowed Andrew to see the mess that he'd become. Then he picked up a shelf, started piling the books of poetry that had fallen and placing them back where they belonged. The most important thing that Neil had done was stayed. He hadn't been afraid of the mess, but willing to help clean it, like no one ever had.

Once his pulse steadied, Andrew left the bathroom.  
  
~

As he scooped coffee grounds into the coffee filter, he thought about how he'd measured out his pulse for Neil at the airport, and how Neil must never know that fearing for his safety had made Andrew's heart race five times faster than it had then. That fear was a weakness that could be used against him. His hand had stopped halfway to the coffee filter, the tablespoon of dark grounds stilled and the quiet buzz of the refrigerator became deafening as new details of his nightmare floated to the forefront of his mind.

  
At first it had been Riko standing over Neil with one of Andrew and Renee's knives. He drew the blade over Neil's skin time and time again until all of him was covered in a sheen of blood so thick that Andrew could smell it. Andrew had been stuck, restrained somehow, forced to watch and unable to move. Occasionally, Riko looked at Andrew and offered him the blade.  
' _Isn't this what you want, Doe? Isn't this what makes you_ tick?' Riko had asked. The third time Riko Moriyama offered him the blade, Andrew took it, and became Riko.  
Neil pleaded with him as he'd retraced each wound, poking it through barely clotted scabs until fresh blood covered the tip of his wicked knife.  
' _Andrew, this isn't you_ ,' Neil sobbed through grit teeth. ' _It's not you_.'  
Except it was. It was exactly what Andrew was.  
A monster.  
  
_THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO THE THINGS I LOVE_

Andrew's hand jerked back violently when a knock at the door brought him back to reality. Coffee grounds had rained down and littered the counter and peppered the tops of his feet as well as the floor. He stared at them as his mind righted itself. Somewhere in there he allowed himself to remember that he had not actually hurt Neil. No matter how much his mind wanted to play the images over and over again as if they were memories, he had not hurt Neil.  
When he opened the door, Renee wasn't smiling.

"Good morning, Andrew." She said softly. He didn't answer, but he could feel the grit of the coffee grounds sticking to the bottom of his feet as he stepped back on the thin carpet to let her inside.

"So what did they ruin this time?" he asked as he went back to the kitchen and began sweeping up the fallen coffee grounds, Renee chewed her lip as she watched him from where she leaned against the doorway. She was surveying the kitchen, the small mess that he was cleaning up, and gauging his mood. That was never a good sign, and it put an unease in his stomach. "Renee, what did they do?"

"I heard that the cars are totaled."

Dread swallowed him and his mood fouled the way paper curled in on itself when it burned. This wasn't the first time psychotic fans had trashed the Palmetto campus, and it wasn't the first time they'd trashed the cars, Andrew was still trying to pay his deductible from the last time the car had been wrecked.

"How bad?"

She shook her head.

"I haven't seen yet. Did Neil-"

She didn't need to finish the question for Andrew to know what she'd been about to say.

"Don't ask stupid questions. Wake them, I'm starting the coffee and then I'm going down to see."

Once the coffee was started, Andrew grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door, slipped into his shoes and was out the door before Renee had returned from the bedroom. Angry athletes filled the halls of Fox Tower. Some were on phones shouting about the damage to their vehicles, others were looking pissed as they pounded on dorm room doors. It wouldn't take long for them to get word of Neil's public taunt of the Raven's. They wouldn't understand why it had been dangerous but they would understand that the Raven's fan's were not to be provoked.

The crowd parted around him as he made his way to the stairs. Everyone knew his name from news reports and rumors probably, they knew that he was crazy, and getting in his way when his mood was already black was basically suicide.

They weren't right, but they weren't wrong either.

Renee caught up just before he made it to the stairs.

"Andrew," She was a little out of breath. "Why don't we go down together?"

He leveled a gaze on her that would have frozen most people. A couple of girls just behind Renee backed away.

"Do you always do what Coach asks you to do?"

At that she did smile, it was bright and winning.

"Most of the time, yes. So I'll be sticking with you for a while today."

Instead of answering, he just started down the stairs, taking them in a jog. When they reached the bottom, Andrew stepped back and let Renee lead him.

The parking lot was chaos. Rabid fans had hit the cars before, but this was something else entirely. Raw ground beef had been thrown haphazardly around the parking lot along with rotten eggs, garbage, and stones of varying sizes. Almost every single car sported at least one scratched or broken window, the ones that didn't were the lucky ones that got off with a few dings or scratches from the thrown rocks, though it was clear when Andrew saw Matt's truck that the vandals had known exactly which cars they'd been targeting.

Instead of going straight to his car, Renee lead him over to where Neil stood with the upperclassmen, all of them looked pissed, but Neil looked sick. It was an interesting change from the way Andrew knew he would have looked at the beginning of the year.

Less concerned with the cars than he was with the fact that he could now see for himself that Neil was alright, he took up a spot next to Neil and looked over the damage of Matt's truck. Neil watched him as he did, what he was looking for Andrew could not say, however he could say with confidence that he would never find it. Andrew had already checked, his mask was perfect.

Once Neil's attention was no longer on him, he hummed thoughtfully and turned on his heel. He was ready to see his car now, dread was ripping his stomach to shreds as he imagined what he would find, he was done waiting for Renee to finish coddling Allison, especially when they all knew that Allison could just buy a new fucking car. Though the shadow that followed him was not Renee's. It was Neil's.

He would have taken the time to entertain the thought of how interesting that was if he had not then seen his car. It was a total loss. Andrew did not need to speak to the insurance company to know that. They did not have the money to replace it. The car was gone.

The entire frame of the car had been pounded in, and the hood was so mangled that he was sure the engine was ruined. The vandal's had certainly done their research. They knew that Kevin and Neil rode in this car (if the word TRAITOR across the hood was any indication) and as a result, they'd gone the extra mile to trash it.

Andrew didn't care about the car, he cared about his freedom, and he knew that without this car there wasn't going to be any. When Andrew had been on his medication, he had not been able to drive his car because of the side effects. Now he'd been able to drive it for two whole weeks and it had been taken from him. His mood sank the more he looked at it, in the back seat atop piles of refuse and decaying garbage there was a glossy eyed fox.

His stomach nearly rolled. The poor thing's neck had been broken judging by the unnatural way it laid. If only the vandals had stopped there. Its stomach was sliced all the way to its throat and its insides were spilling out on top of the garbage. The smell was just as bad as the sight.

Nicky's voice was like nails on a chalkboard. Andrew had to fight against the urge to grit his teeth, and instead focused on biting his inner cheek until he tasted blood. Aaron and Kevin were close behind. Aaron was the only one who had the right to look as sick as he did. This car was the only thing he had left of his bitch of a mother.

The next few minutes passed in a dragged out slow motion until Aaron said something to which Neil answered sheepishly and Aaron spoke again heatedly.

It took a few seconds for the words Aaron had spoken to register.

" _Seth was a one off then_?"

It was an incredibly low blow, and completely uncalled for, but when Allison came out of nowhere and backhanded Aaron so hard that skin on skin responded with a brutal crack, it stopped being about anything else and it became about keeping his promises.

The second Allison struck Aaron, all the adrenaline from earlier came rushing back. Renewed and fierce and boiling, it brought the murderous darkness with it. It was the same as it had been before. Nothingness so fierce and deep it might as well have been as if Andrew were falling asleep began to close in dangerously on all of Andrew's edges. It tunneled his vision until all he could see was his goal, which right then was Allison.

His mood had been foul since he woke up because of his fear, because of his dream. Seeing the car in shambles had only made it worse. Now his body was moving and he couldn't stop it, didn't want to, because he was going to keep his promise to Aaron even if it meant taking a million steps back on all the progress he had made, because Andrew was nothing without his promises.

Without the promise to Aaron, his twin brother might as well be a stranger, and Andrew was done with being alone. The poison of his mind stayed just enough at bay that he knew who he was holding, and that she deserved it, but it was strong enough that Andrew had already forgotten why.

A voice broke through the dark. He could see, but everything was black, blacker than black, it was like swimming through ink no one else could see. He could see Renee, and realized that she was hovering gently over Allison, whose desperate pulse was thrumming against his fingertips. Perhaps it wasn't her pulse at all, perhaps he was merely feeling his own.

"...just Allison. Okay? It's just Allison." It was like hearing her through a waterlogged radio, there was static in his ears and the screaming that he'd learned to ignore was shrill inside of his head.

_That's right... It's Allison._

His mind replayed the moment she had backhanded Aaron, and even in the memory it had felt as if he'd shared the blow. Of course, that was how they got here, Andrew was simply keeping his promise.

"It's not 'just' anyone when she lays a hand on what's mine," His voice sounded strange, too automatic, even to himself. "Let go,"

As he watched Renee hug Allison protectively, he found his anger swelling. He was the monster in this story even though he had made it perfectly clear when he walked into Fox Tower what would happen if anyone touched Aaron.  
  
_It's not my fault you thought I was lying_.

"You know I won't. You told me to protect them." Renee's voice was shaking, but her gaze was unwavering as she stared up at him. She was brave, but knew Andrew, she knew what he could do, and knew that if his wrath broke against Allison unrestrained, she might not survive it.

She was right.

Even now Andrew was fighting against the black out. The poisonous thing inside of him wanted to make an example of Allison, but the other part of him, the scared little boy that he'd once seen in the mirror, wanted to let go. Unfortunately for Allison, the vicious part of him was stronger, and its flames were fueled further by his grief and anger over the totalled car. It was like pouring gasoline on an already burning brush fire.

"You failed," He said coldly just because he knew the words would cut worse than any knife against Renee's skin. "You should have been faster."

They both knew, hell, all of them knew, that there was no way humanly possibly that she could have been, she'd been moving before Andrew had even grabbed Allison. But Andrew had been faster and now he stood, pressing Allison down into the concrete while she struggled to breathe against his grip. Even he didn't know what he would do.  
Someone said something, but against the static in his head it was meaningless.

_I am a monster. I'm exactly what they think I am._

_I could seriously kill her._

_This wasn't how it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be different._

_Monster._

_What a joke, like anyone could ever really understand._

_I am a monster._

_I could really do it._

_MONSTER._

"Andrew, give her back to me." Renee pleaded, her voice shattered through and brought him back. Had it always been such a blindingly brilliant day?

Nicky had fallen to the ground and taken Allison's hand in a show of silent support, her knuckles went white as she squeezed his hand back. The sight made Andrew's rage burn even hotter. How dare they take her side when they all knew exactly what they had done wrong? Especially _Nicky_.

In a distant part of his mind he wondered how Aaron looked, was he looking at Allison the way Dan was? All wide-eyes and fear. Or was he looking at Andrew the way he had when the police had brought him into the hospital room after the car accident? A swirling cocktail of fear and hatred mixed with bone deep sorrow.

 _That wasn't how it was supposed to be_ , Andrew remembered thinking that. He didn't understand why Aaron was able to look at him like he was a monster when all Andrew had done was upheld his promise from that second night.

But he had, and the why didn't matter because Andrew lost his brother that day. Before he had ever even had him.  
Now was probably no different.  
  
"That's enough." The words were in German, that was unremarkable, it was the voice they came from that struck him.

Andrew had gotten so into the habit of playing Neil's words in his head that, at first, he hadn't been sure Neil had really said them. Though, for the first time, Andrew wasn't sure Neil could help him, even if he was being clever enough about it.

Where anyone else may have simply decided to grab him and pull him off of Allison, Neil simply held his hand above Renee's head and waited before saying again, "That's enough, Andrew."

"You don't get to decide that." he replied in German, his voice did a better job of not shaking than his fingers did. Andrew was well aware that the majority of the team couldn't understand the two of them, but he was hyperaware of the fact that Aaron and Nicky could.

There was a fine line being toed now as Neil stood on the ledge Andrew had built trying to talk him down. If Andrew wasn't careful, everyone would see first hand how much control Neil had over him. The thought burned like acid in his throat, almost as bad as the realization that Neil had a leash on him now and he was pulling it taut.  
  
A venomous voice whispered in the back of his mind, " _Killing him wouldn't feel so horrible now would it?_ "  
  
It wouldn't, and the knives in Andrew's pockets felt heavier with that realization. Though the knowledge of the bandages underneath Neil's clothes and Neil's phantom screams in his ears made him resist the urge. He wouldn't be like him.

It was very clear now that there were only two ways out of this, and both of them felt like death.

Andrew had to choose now between his pride or murder. If his stubbornness didn't subside, he feared he might actually kill Allison just to prove to Neil, to all of them, that he couldn't be controlled


	9. Run

Neil was alarmingly steady as he stood in front of Andrew with his hand stretched out over Renee's head. Andrew's fingers shook against the back of Allison's neck and he hoped that if she were to feel them, she would mistake the tremors as her own even though she wasn't shaking nearly as badly as Andrew had anticipated. Allison didn't seem to be as weak as he'd thought before. It left him to wonder if he'd really needed to remind her after Seth's death that they needed her on the court at all.

“If you hurt her, you disqualify us. The ERC won't let us play with eight people.” It was a fact Andrew knew well. Little over three months ago he had stood in front of a grieving Allison and told her the exact same thing. He had said it as if he had been simply telling her that the sun was shining. Just the way Neil was doing now.

Just like when Seth died, the calm in Neil's voice was unnerving. How could he keep his face straight when Andrew was a giant ball of static, a ticking time bomb, a towering tsunami ready to crash and break against them all? How could he make the fact that Andrew was about to fucking kill a team member about Exy? He couldn't really be that obsessed with it? Could he?

“Your  single-mindedness is as nauseating as always.”

“You promised,” Neil said, and Andrew felt his fingers twitch against Allison's neck. “You said you'd stop cutting them off at the knees. You said you'd cooperate at least until we destroyed the Raven's in finals. Were you lying to me?”

 _Did I say that?_  
         
Andrew knew he didn't, but that didn't stop his mind from trying to make it true as he stared blankly at Allison's bowed head. Her already brilliant blonde hair was nearly blinding in the afternoon sunlight as he imagined himself saying it. The false memory hung between him and Neil like vapor, though he knew Neil couldn't see it, because it had never happened. However, if Neil had asked him to promise that, he probably would have agreed. A fact that did not sit well with Andrew.

"I didn't promise that,”

“You promised to have my back this year and I told you where I was going. It's all the same at this point whether you want it to be or not. So do you have my back or don't you?” Neil waited a beat to let Andrew think, when he took too long, Neil prompted him again. “Andrew, look at me.”  
  
_Look at me._

Andrew's awareness fractured into two directions.

One put him back in the locker room willing a flighty Neil to just look at him and see the truth inside his eyes.

In the other awareness, those words struck him him so hard that his mask slipped and he could feel the anger that welled up inside his chest slicing deeply into everything it touched in response.

Those words were an _order_. Neil was not only pulling the leash Andrew had warned him about in order to protect Allison anymore, he was ordering him to stand down like some sort of pet. The knowledge of it was maddening, and it was not looking good for the nervous girl shivering at his feet because of it. With each adrenaline fueled beat of his heart the blackness started to close in, darker and darker, until his grip on the only remaining sliver of his sanity threatened to slip out of his grasp.

Prompted by his anger, he let it go. And like a curtain of black satin it hung over him, coating him like a second skin.

Andrew knew how it looked because he'd seen the mug shot from that night, the term ‘if looks could kill’ seemed like a child's fairy tale compared to the look that was in his eyes now. It wasn't just that deadness that Andrew was startled by every time he saw his reflection.

It was much worse.

It was every bloody razor blade that had ever dropped from too weak fingers as lines of crimson crawled toward a drain, and it was all the times he'd been too weak to fight back. It was the poison that even now licked against his consciousness reminding him how easy it would be to break Allison's neck, and whispered how easy it would be to draw a blade across his own every time he held one of the knives.

Neil saw it, Andrew knew he did by the way Neil's shoulders tensed and the way his bottom lip fell just a bit with thinly concealed shock. He even imagined that he could hear his sharp intake of breath over the ruckus of the gathering crowd.

_This is what I am, do you see it now? Are you scared?_

But then, Andrew also saw something else on Neil's face that he couldn't place. Not quite amusement... but close, maybe something like fascination. It sent a chill down Andrew's arms, because it wasn't the reaction he had expected, nor the one he'd wanted. Neil never did what Andrew thought he would do.

"Fuck you,” Andrew growled.

He was too far gone to pull his voice back together so the words came out like nails and the brittle harshness of the German only added the effect of venom dripping off their piercing tips. Though even that seemed to have absolutely no effect on Neil, he simply met Andrew's gaze and held it. There was a challenge buried deep inside his eyes. Never had there been anyone who could look at him like that.

“Do you or don't you?” Neil asked, and Andrew felt himself crumbling around the edges. Just like that it became a matter of choosing between Neil's promise, or Aaron's.  
  
__Don't_ make me choose _ .  
  
Deep down, Andrew knew that Neil was important to him, that in his own twisted way he cared for Neil, that it was a problem he wasn't ready to face, but his promise to Aaron was the closest thing he had come to showing affection. He would go to the ends of the earth to protect it, to protect Aaron so neither of them would have to be alone anymore. But Neil was... what?  
     
_God_ , _don't make me choose_ .

But if he had to... he would choose Aaron. Neil was not a thing he could keep. Neil was flighty bird always one step too close to flying away. Aaron had nowhere else to go.  
  
“I made him a promise, too. I won't break his to keep yours.” Confusion lit Neil's face. Of course it did. No one else, not even Nicky, knew the details of Andrew's promises to Aaron, and Andrew wasn't about to explain.

“Andrew, that's-” Aaron's voice was weak. “No, Andrew. No. It's alright. I'm alright. It didn't even hurt.”

He debated Aaron's words as he stared at Neil. Aaron had given him an out. If Allison had not hurt Aaron there was nothing to uphold. It wasn't about Neil anymore, or Exy, or Allison. It was about Aaron. Which currently, was all that mattered to Andrew.

So he let Allison drop down to the cold concrete.

Andrew doubted anyone noticed since everyone's eyes were on Allison, but Neil held out his arm like a barricade to keep anyone from going near. Like everything else, the action stirred up conflicting and complicated emotions. On one hand, he was glad Neil understood that he was still volatile and needed space, but being sanctioned off like a rabid dog only made it worse, though the space gave him time to relax and fix his stance and expression so no one would ever know.

Dan took longer to set in on him than he expected despite Neil's silent warning, but when she did the fury in her voice was enough to make Nicky look ashamed even though he'd done nothing wrong.

“You asshole. You could have seriously hurt her!” There was murder in her eyes fit to slay even the most ferocious of beasts. It was the exact reason Andrew had decided she was worth following.

Danielle Wilds had exactly what it took to get a team like the Foxes off the ground and keep everyone in line, and she was not afraid to use it. Even if it meant calling in her lioness temper to do so. Unfortunately, right now she was no match for Andrew, nor would she ever be.

“You do not have the right to act surprised, this is the second time in as many weeks one of you has forgotten yourself. You do not get to take offense when you force my hand.” He rattled the words off as if from memory and meant every word. Andrew knew exactly what his teammates thought of him, he knew perfectly well that they had expected something like this to have happened sooner after his return. He could see Dan prickling as if each word struck her as he redrew the line that had been dissolved in his absence.  
  
Us .  
  
Them .

“This isn't-”

  
However, Andrew would never find out what it wasn't because Wymack's voice echoed excruciatingly through the parking lot. Only then did he realize how his head ached.

“What the fuck is going on here?”

All nine of them fell silent though the parking lot still buzzed.

At the prompt of one of Wymack's cocked eyebrows, Dan answered.

“Nothing, just rethinking every time we defended our decision to recruit the monsters.” The bitterness in her voice hung in the air between all of them, though it had no effect on Andrew.

“Hey,” Nicky started. 

As usual when Nicky started talking, Andrew tuned him out. The dew on the blade of grass near his foot was far more interesting than anything he had to say anyway.

“Don't even try to justify it. You don't return a punch with a broken neck.” Matt broke in. 

“Where you come from, maybe not.” Andrew replied, suddenly interested in the conversation again.

“The real world?” Sarcasm dripped so thickly from each word Andrew could practically see it splashing down onto the concrete.

That was a joke. It had to be. 

Born to rich and stable parents, Matt thought he knew the real world? The closest Matt had ever gotten to the real world was when he was drugging himself into the gutter, and even then he was a spoiled brat. He would never know what it was like not to have a home to return to when you messed up, to be afraid to sleep because it meant vulnerability, but unable to fight it anyway. To be drugged out of his mind so everyone around him could be comfortable because no one could handle the fact that he was angry at the world for allowing the circumstances that had turned him into the monster he was. To wake with his heart about to burst in his chest every time the bed so much as creaked, or a blanket slipped off during the night, because trust was a concept so fucking elusive he couldn't even be sure that his own cousin wouldn't pin him down and take what he wanted just like everyone else had. To want so deeply to die and yet be so desperate to survive at the same time that murder felt like a necessary evil. Matt would never know what that sort of fear and abandonment was like. He would never know the crippling loss that came with having it and watching it shatter into a million beautiful pieces because he was too weak to endure the pain required to keep it for just a little while longer.

“Don't,” The agitation bubbling beneath his surface made keeping his mask in place difficult. The knives in all of his pockets felt heavy, and that omnipresent demon in his head whispered _, “Do it."_

Instead, Andrew tapped his finger against his lips twice in warning. Wymack shifted uncomfortably as he recognized Andrew's tic.

“A privileged child like you has never seen the real world. Don't speak of it like you understand.” He dared Matt to argue, because the second he did, Andrew would find that place between Matt's ribs and this time he wouldn't fucking hesitate.

“Enough,”  Wymack snapped his fingers at the upperclassmen as he asked where they were parked. “Go wait with your cars. I'll be there in two seconds.” He motioned impatiently over his shoulder and added, “Go, I said.”

His expectant eyes focused on the group that was left when the upperclassmen were out of sight. The disappointment was not masked, especially as it raked over and passed Andrew.

"No one answered my question. What the fuck is going on?”

Andrew was content to let Wymack figure it out on his own, but Neil answered anyway.

“Allison hit Aaron, Andrew hit back."

Had he still been on his medication, the pure absurdity of how easily Neil summarized the situation would have made him laugh in spiteful glee. Andrew would have taunted his brother for the battles he chose not to fight, but now he didn't have the energy so he simply stared at them all as if he were bored by the concept of their lives. In fact, at the moment, he very much was.

Wymack had his nose pinched between his fingers, and his eyes were squeezed shut in a way that screamed stress, but that wasn't Andrew's problem. If Wymack wanted to avoid situations like this he could have told his busybodies to behave themselves, or better yet chosen not to be a martyr of a coach. The coach’s voice was tight when he finally spoke.

“Andrew, we are going to talk about this,” He said, and then backtracked as if he had a better idea, “No, I am going to talk about this, and you are going to listen. Today, but not now. After the rest of this chaos has been sorted out. Do you understand?” He waited, and Andrew stared at him with his arms crossed like a defiant child. “I didn't hear you.”

“You talk, I'll listen.” It was the only way to shut him up.

Wymack's eyes were filled with something Andrew found hard to read, but it was gone soon enough, sliding carefully underneath the practiced calm of a man who had seen much.

“I'm going to check on them. I'll be right back.” He pointed down at the sidewalk in emphasis of his next words. “When I get back we're going to focus on the real problem and the real enemy. Is that clear?”

Nicky and Neil agreed simultaneously, and Wymack turned on his heel toward where the upperclassmen were waiting with their mangled vehicles without waiting for response from the rest, likely because he knew damn well he wouldn't get one.

Andrew turned his attention back to his own ruined car. He noticed now that all four tires seemed to have been sliced to ribbons. He really didn't care about the car, in fact, he had hated it. Having any piece of the bitch who had beaten his brother out of her own guilt and insanity had always grated on his nerves anyway, but it didn't change the fact that it had been his. Andrew hated it when people touched his things.

The five of them stood in silence waiting for Wymack's return.

Andrew thought about Aaron, who was staring at him, as he stared at the chunks of rubber that littered the ground.  
  
_When  he'd gotten the call from Officer Higgins telling him that he not only had a brother, but a twin, Andrew had thought it some sort of joke._

_“Very funny.” He deadpanned. “I'm sure you can hear my utter amusement.” But the more Higgins talked, the more Andrew felt everything he knew slipping away through the bottom of his feet. Not just a brother, but a twin. And not just that... his brother, Aaron, wanted to meet him._

_It_ _had been a lot to take in. Andrew had always wondered what it would be like to have a brother, someone who always had his back and vice versa. In a world as fucked up as Andrew was used to, the idea seemed nice._

_However_ _, it was of no surprise to Andrew when Cass came to him the next morning and told him that his birth mother had prohibited all contact. Though that had never stopped Drake from encouraging Andrew to find a way to meet him anyway. It seemed innocent at the dinner table, when it was Drake fighting against Andrew's birthmother's decision, but when the bedroom door closed and locked behind Drake, it became far darker._

_“Come on, A.J,” Drake cooed as he pinned Andrew's wrists together above his head and forced him into the wall. “Imagine it if I could have both of you. Hell, I'd share, you could have him, too. Wouldn't you like that?” He stopped talking long enough to grind against Andrew and moan, “Beautiful.”_

_Andrew_ _had decided then that he didn't want Aaron anywhere near Drake. No matter how much he actually wanted to meet him, too. So when the call came from Higgins with Aaron's contact details, Andrew had already known what he needed to do._

 _The_ _letter Andrew wrote to Aaron was short._

_“I don't need you, and I never will. Stay the hell away from me.”_

_He hadn't believed that there had been anything left to his soul up until that day. Andrew felt that last piece break apart sharply as he pushed the letter into the mailbox and let go of any hope of having a brother he wasn't afraid of._

_Dealing_ _with Drake got harder after that... His attacks became more frequent, the cuts became deeper, and despite Andrew's adamant answers that he was never going to contact Aaron, Drake continued to persist. Eventually everything inside of Andrew that had him holding on so tightly to stay with the Spears went numb, he forgot why he was fighting for it._

 _The_ _actual memory of that night remained little less than a blur, but Andrew knew exactly what had happened, remembered it as if he had been outside of his body._

_It was an ordinary family dinner. Steak and potatoes with steamed greens as a side, Cass, who had also baked a pie for dessert, sat at one head of the table, Richard, who had grilled the steaks, at the other. Andrew had been cutting his steak into tiny, less than bite sized pieces when Drake stepped on the landmine that was Andrew for the last time, or so Andrew had thought._

_“A.J,” Cass said gently as she spooned seasoned potatoes onto his plate. “Have you thought about contacting Aaron lately?”_

_It_ _was an innocent enough question, and easy enough to lie about. It warmed him that Cass cared enough to try._

_“No,” Andrew lied. The truth was, Andrew thought about him everyday._

_“Too bad,” Drake chimed in, “Seeing them both in the same place would be a hell of a sight.”_

_Andrew_ _didn't remember leaping across the table with the knife held tightly in his fist toward Drake, but he did remember Drake pinning him face down to the dining room floor after a short struggle. The polished wood had been smeared with greens and potato bits that had been destroyed in the scuffle, and a sharp knee between his shoulder blades kept him on the floor. Someone's steak was lying next to a broken plate. The knife was nowhere in sight._

_“If I didn't know any better, A.J, I'd say you like it when I pin you down.” Drake breathed into his ear, too low for anyone to hear. No matter how he struggled, and clawed at the floorboards, he couldn't get free. So he turned feral, thrashing against Drake's hold, hoping to break it. It only served to make him angrier that Drake was enjoying it when he failed. If he had only been able to kill him when he'd had the chance._

_“I don't know what happened... one minute we were fine and the next he just jumped right over the table with the knife, he was... I don't know what happened.” Cass explained to the officers that responded to Richard's call. Her hand was at her throat, clutching for a necklace that wasn't there and she shook her head as if she could force away the reality that Andrew had been a hairsbreadth away from killing her son._

_Andrew_ _had not expected to be welcomed back to that house, but apparently Drake refused to press charges, and made a show of 'forgiving' Andrew for his actions. However, Andrew had no intentions of ever returning. He was done._

 _When Luther had come, Andrew trusted him with his darkest secret and made him promise not to send him back to the Spears, and to ensure that they never had another foster child where Drake could reach them. Promises made, Luther still managed to shatter the last of Andrew's ability to trust with one word. But he kept his other one. A few days later Luther returned with Aaron in tow._  
     
~  
     
“ _Why the hell are you here?” Andrew had leveled his gaze on his brother. At first glance it was like looking in a mirror and seeing what could have been._

 _They_ _stared at each other for a few moments, both Luther and Higgins left with a warning that they would be back in half an hour._

_“Because you're my brother. Uncle Luther asked me to come, and-” Aaron's voice had broke as he studied Andrew, like he'd thought better of saying the next words, but his uncertainty was gone in a blink, replaced with bright, burning defiance. “And because I love you. I want you to come home.”_

_The_ _words had shaken Andrew, no one had ever said those words to him before. Any of them._

_“No you don't. You don't. You don't even know me.” Andrew spat, building up a wall of thorns around himself. He was afraid._

_“That's not my fault.” Aaron whispered, staring down at the cold stainless steel table between them as if it had been the only thing separating them all this time. “If I had known…” his hands dropped helplessly into his lap and he fixed his gaze back to Andrew. “I never would have stopped fighting until I got to you.”_

_Andrew_ _froze at first, struck by the way his own feelings had just spilled from his brother's mouth, but then his lips quirked up in an awful sneer. It was already too late to stop by the time he realized what he was doing._

 _“But you did stop, didn't you? You're a liar.”_  
_  
_ Stop it, Andrew. He doesn't deserve this.

 _Aaron's_ _face fell, but just as quickly contorted in anger._

_“You told me to stop! What was I supposed to do?”_

_“Exactly what I told you to do, but here you are.”_

_“Here I am.” The causticness in Aaron's voice was like acid. If that hadn't been enough to let him know that Aaron had been disappointed by Andrew, the way he stared him down would have been._

_And_ _so the two of them sat, staring at each other as the clock ticked away their time. Andrew felt that he'd been given a second chance somehow by finally standing up to Drake. Andrew had earned this._

 _It was when Aaron had lifted his arm to wipe his eyes, stark with exhaustion, that Andrew noticed the bruises on Aaron's forearms. Blue, swollen, angry and fresh, they mapped a handprint against his fair skin. Those weren't the only ones either, Andrew had guessed._

_So it turned out that Aaron had not gotten the easy path. They'd both been down a path of hell. A fierce need to protect Aaron overwhelmed and startled Andrew. He had spent so long convincing himself that he felt nothing, that to feel something so strong so suddenly was like a brick to the head and it hurt just as much. It was vulnerability, but it was a goal. What if Andrew didn't have to be alone? He looked into his brother's eyes that day and even now he wasn't sure what it was he had seen, but it was enough to make him want to try for more. Even if only to end up back where he'd started when he killed the bastard who had left those bruises on his brother._

_“There is no home for me to go home to, you know that right? Your mother doesn't want-”_

_“I know what she told them,” Aaron snapped, interrupting Andrew. “I know what they said, I heard every word, but it's not about what she wants anymore. It's about what I want. Uncle Luther can get her to change her mind. When he does, will you come home?”_ _  
_

_The_ _bruises somehow changed everything._

_“I'll consider it. Will you visit again?” Andrew asked as Higgins unlocked the door to collect Aaron._

_“I'll consider it, if you want me to.” Aaron answered with a ghost of a smile._  
_  
_ _So_  they talked. Through letters and visits Andrew gave Aaron a sugar and sprinkle coated version of how he'd grown up and Aaron did the same. The bruises on Aaron got worse, and Andrew toed the line to increase the possibility of early release. When Aaron came in with a black eye he'd gotten from a 'fall', Andrew finally agreed to go 'home' when he was released.

 _His_ _brother._ _  
_

_His brother that wanted him._

_Family_ _. Andrew had a family._

P _erhaps salvation did exist._  

It didn't.

  
Time dragged after Wymack returned and the police made their rounds, the knowledge that after he would somehow survive this, he had to deal with Wymack and then, and only then could he go up to the roof and drink himself into a mind that finally stopped screaming wasn't really helping either. Andrew was sick of the way his thoughts bounced wildly around his head, each one bringing sharp shocks of pain as his temples continued to throb.

Andrew couldn't decide if he really wanted to go through with killing Neil or thank him for once again finding a way to save him from himself long enough to avoid being more of a murderer than he already was, and trying to sort his thoughts as everyone continued on with life around him was like grabbing at air. It was impossible and frustrating, even without the constant mechanical beeping of tow trucks that felt like ten thousand jackhammers piercing his skull as they hauled away the destroyed vehicles.

He stayed silent through both the police inquisition and the too-peppy insurance agent. Even if she was somehow able to tell him and Aaron apart, he couldn't forgive her for profiting off of destruction. So he shook another cigarette from the pack shoved into his coat pocket into his finally steadied fingers and stood back with Kevin to watch as Nicky and Aaron showed the woman the extent of the damage. At the sight of the dead fox in the back she flinched back. For a moment the horror on her face suggested that she knew exactly what kind of monsters they were dealing with, but she quickly fixed her smile and retreated once she had everything she needed.

After an announcement about rental cars, Wymack left to collect the rest of the Foxes and again the five of them stood in silence. Kevin had taken up a spot by his side after the upperclassmen had left. Whether it be out of solidarity or because he was shaken by the word 'TRAITOR' angrily scrawled on the hood of the car Andrew didn't know. Nicky and Aaron had grouped themselves off to the side and Neil stood alone. His gaze kept flicking back to Aaron though, his brow furrowing like he was piecing together a difficult puzzle. For some reason the sight of it made Andrew's stomach turn.    

Anger returned with the upperclassmen. Dan and Matt fixed their holier than thou glares on him as if he could be bothered to give a damn while Renee put on her best peace keeping smile, though from the set of her jaw, Andrew could tell that she was angry, too. It was Allison he was actually interested in as they all filed back. Not because he was concerned or worried that he had hurt her, though for all the points Neil had made about the ERC, he hoped he hadn't.

No. Andrew wanted to see her cower, but only fiery defiance waited for him in her eyes. She met his gaze without so much as a flinch and a message so loud she may as well have shouted and let it echo across the lot. “ _I'm not afraid of you_.”

Like Matt, Allison had no concept of the real world. Her first real taste had been when she lost Seth, but if she was serious she would be the only female behind Bee and Renee not to be intimated. Something like that Andrew could respect. Not necessarily like, but respect. Though she was still cautious enough to stay out of his reach, understandably enough. Her knees, bare due to the scant pajama bottoms she still wore, bore the bloody scrapes that served testament to just how hard Andrew had forced her down.

~

One half-assed, yet unanimous vote for whatever Nicky had said later, and Wymack was leading him away from the group.

If the air didn't make him come close to gagging, he would have described being away from everyone's scrutinizing glares as finally being able to breathe.

“We're in the truck today, watch your step.” Was all Wymack said as he sidestepped a pile of hamburger already crawling with maggots. Aside from that, they made their way through the nasty meat covered parking lot in silence.  
  
    ~  
  
As usual Wymack's truck, the vehicle he used when he wasn't on official business, smelled of stale cigarettes and burning oil. Had Andrew's mood been anything other than a black hole he would have commented on it, or made a joke out of it. Instead he leaned back in the seat, propped one foot up on the dashboard and crossed his arms like a sulking child. He only uncrossed them when Wymack handed him a cigarette.

Wymack had driven a full ten blocks away from Fox Tower before he said anything.

“What the hell happened back there?” He didn't sound angry, but that was probably because he had a lot of practice from dealing with the other Foxes.

“Neil told you.”

“I'm not asking Neil. I'm asking you.”

Andrew simply took a long drag of his cigarette as he leveled his stare on Wymack and blew the smoke in his direction.

“I told everyone what would happen if anyone touched Aaron.” He said it like the fact it was, as if he were telling Wymack that the sun was hot. It was that simple. When he'd introduced himself to the Foxes he'd told them that there would be hell to pay if anyone so much as laid a finger on Aaron. He had not been lying.

“I know I don't have to tell you that what happened back there wasn't good.”

No. No, he didn't. Andrew took a heavy drag of his cigarette and let the smoke burn in his chest and throat until the need to breathe nearly hurt before he blew the smoke at the windshield. He didn't answer, and after a few minutes of silence Wymack tried again.

“Do I need to call Betsy?” 

At the mention of Bee, Andrew flicked his ashes out the window. 

“Probably,” He answered finally with a sarcastic flip of his wrist.

Wymack sent him a sideways glance, probably checking Andrew's sarcasm. Fucking Wymack. He could probably see through walls too.

“Andrew, they're on your side.”

“No one is on my side.”

“You sure? It seems like Neil is.”

Andrew felt his face contort into something ugly before he remembered to control it. He was not in the mood to talk about Neil.

“Here's the part where I talk and you listen okay,” Luckily, Wymack had started before Andrew had the chance to say something awful. “The whole team rallied behind you in December, Andrew. All of them. They were all pissed and protective, for you.”

Andrew stared out the window and watched the buildings go by.

“Am I supposed to care?” Andrew asked blankly.

“Can you?”

    Andrew paused with the cigarette halfway to his lips, he thought of his fear, of his anger, his stupid fascination with Neil before taking one last drag of his cigarette. He didn't know.

“Jesus christ, you sound like Neil.” He breathed the words out with a cloud of smoke and tossed his cigarette butt out the small crack of the window.

Wymack was unaffected. “Speaking of Neil, how is that whole thing going?”

“I thought you didn't get paid to get involved in our personal problems, Coach. Did you get a pay raise?”

Wymack's snort was derisive, but his only answer was a pointed, patient silence filled by the staticy radio and the growl of the engine.

“It's not a thing.”

“Whatever you say,” Wymack said softly. “Either way, I'm serious. Don't let this happen again.”

“That's not up to me, it's up to them.”

“Whatever, you better not have fucked up my line up with this stunt.”

“Now you sound like Kevin.”  
  
Wymack chose silence over tempting Andrew's foul mood further. They ordered lunch for the team at a crappy Chinese food joint and thirty minutes later, Coach's arms were laden with a box filled with smaller takeout boxes and Andrew with the bag of fortune cookies.

“Thanks for the help,” Wymack said dryly as he got back into the driver's seat after wrestling the box of food into the small backseat with one hand.

“Anytime, Coach.”

Once they arrived back at Fox Tower and divvied up the food, Wymack put an arm in front of Andrew.

“This doesn't happen again, you hear me?” Each word was accented sternly. 

“I told you, that's up to them.”

“Andrew, I'm serious.”

“So am I.”

Andrew took the incredulous look Wymack sent him as permission to leave and shut the dorm room door in Wymack's face before he shrugged off his jacket, and kicked off his shoes. Nicky and Kevin were arguing over something until Andrew walked into the room.

“Where's Aaron?”

“Uhh,” Nicky's eyes darted to Kevin.

“It's none of my business.” Kevin said, holding up one of his hands as he retreated to his desk with his food. Nicky threw a packet of soy sauce at his back.

“Aaron left after he and Neil kinda fought.” Nicky mumbled as he stirred his fried rice, steam rose from the box.

“What did they fight about?”

Andrew didn't think it was possible for Nicky to look any more uncomfortable than he already had but when Nicky chewed his lip in apprehension and averted his eyes, Andrew could feel it radiating off of him.

"You…” He said slowly. “Something about your promise... and making you let him go.”

Andrew felt his eyebrows quirk up but not before he felt the whole world slow around him. Jumping to conclusions was never wise, but Andrew couldn't help it not with his history of being struck down and left for dead. What the hell business did Neil have with his brother?

He jerked his head to the side as a dismissal to Nicky and went to the liquor cabinet and grabbed a bottle.

“I'm going out.” Andrew said, slipping back into his shoes and jacket.

“What, right now?” Nicky called after him, “you didn't even eat yet. You'll get sick. Andr-” The door slammed behind him and Nicky's voice was abruptly muffled.

Nicky's concern was poorly placed.

_I'm already sick._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked it! I am very excited to see your reactions so, drop some comments for me because tears and curses make me write faster. 
> 
> I also want to thank everyone who has been reading again, I never expected to get this many bookmarks or Kudos and it's amazing to me so from the very bottom of my heart THANK YOU SO MUCH ❤⭐


	10. That Fine Line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I bet you thought I died.   
> As if it would be that easy to get rid of me ❤   
> In all seriousness I am so sorry this took so long to write. I have gotten so many nice comments during my unofficial unannounced hiatus and they really kept me going! So thank you for those. Now without further adieu, I present, Chapter 10

The vodka took longer to set in than Andrew hoped while he had sat dangling his legs over the edge of the building. Four stories below, his car had already been taken and the raucous beeping of the tow truck brigade had progressively died down, but a stray few still scraped against his mind, like nails on a chalkboard, as they towed away the last of their charges. In his pocket, his phone continuously vibrated and chimed as Nicky texted, and called, and texted again, trying to get Andrew to come back to the room. The more it vibrated, the more Andrew wanted to watch it hit the pavement below and shatter into a million tiny little pieces to become someone else's inconvenience. However, he needed the phone and he needed it on because any one of the incoming texts or calls could be someone calling on a promise that he had to keep.

Nicky called one more time, this time Andrew answered.

"If you don't stop I'm going to kill you. Knock it off."

For a moment, only silence greeted him on the other end of the line.

"I just thought," Nicky started but his voice faltered and he ended with a sigh. "Aaron says that Neil isn't allowed in our room anymore...” Nicky paused while Aaron yelled in the background, “ _-if he can't mind his own fucking business!_ ” Another pause and Nicky was back. “Yeah... so... Stay safe."

Andrew looked out over the edge of the building and felt his heart wrench inside his chest as he contemplated allowing himself to slide over the edge just to spite Nicky.

"Whatever," He flipped the phone shut with a satisfying snap and shoved it back into his coat pocket before again taking up the bottle.

The thing about Andrew, was that he never drank to get drunk. The alcohol that burned its way down his throat was only an agent that allowed him to stop feeling everything so deeply. It was liquid armor that shielded Andrew against the cuts and burns of everyday living and numbed the scars of his past. Yet, Andrew chose to drink it up on the roof, where he came when he was afraid of forgetting to be afraid.

Which was it? Did he want to feel or not? He was his very own conundrum, one that he had long ago given up trying to solve.

So Andrew sat in a silence only broken by the sounds of the parking lot below, leaned back using his hands as leverage, and stared up at the sky. The longer he stared up into the endless blue, the farther away even those sounds got. Soon he was being dragged into the undertow that was his thoughts.

Why had it been so easy for him for force Allison down?

Why had Neil been looking at Aaron like that?

Why did Neil tell Aaron that he had to make Andrew let him go?

Did Neil want Aaron somehow?

If Neil wanted Aaron... why was he pulling Andrew's leash?

Why did he feel so betrayed already?

Maybe Neil was just like the rest of the world. Maybe Neil was attracted to Andrew, but by that logic he was also attracted to Aaron since the two were identical. Maybe Neil just wanted one of them and didn't care which. Maybe he had just picked the one with more sanity. Though if that were the case, the joke was on Neil because Aaron wasn't gay, nor would he react well to a crush from a man. But the thought of being so easily interchangeable with his brother hurt. It hurt deep down in a place that held the small bit of light he'd gleaned from Neil's attention and sacrifices.

Andrew knew that he deserved the pain for letting his guard down even just that little bit to allow the hope that had given him so much strength to make him weak. It was stupid. So stupid. Andrew knew better than this. People were not things to be trusted, in fact they were exactly that. Things. Things to be held at an arms distance, things to hurt before they had the chance to hurt first, but his fascination with Neil and all his loose ends had made him forget. Andrew wanted to douse that flame before he'd feel its absence. He wanted it gone before it could hurt him any further... Because he'd known for at least a month at this point that losing Neil wasn't something he could recover from easily.

As if on cue, Andrew heard the door being jostled open behind him and as if the mere thought of him had some sort of summoning power.

Neil sat down next to Andrew, just out of arms reach. If Andrew hadn't noticed that Neil did that with everyone, he would have thought that he still had some sort of an upper hand against Neil. That maybe, despite everything he said, he really was afraid. He wasn't though, it was simply that he was just as bad at letting old habits die as Andrew was.

With a flick of his wrist, he tossed his cigarettes at Neil. Hatred and something far lighter swirled together in a chaotic dance inside his head as he watched him pick the pack up. Again he envisioned Neil's skin hanging from the wall and remembered the horror he'd felt at wanting to do it. He also felt the sharp sting of frustration that came with not knowing what Neil really wanted, and not wanting or knowing how to ask.

"Give me one reason not to push you off the side." He said coldly.

Neil seemed to consider the question for a moment as he shook the cigarette and lighter out of the pack and held the stick between his lips as he used one hand to cup the lighter against the slight wind and the other to coax the flame to life. Once the cherry burned red, Neil took a drag and turned his head to the side to blow the smoke out away from Andrew before he finally answered.

"I'd drag you with me. It's a long way down."

"I hate you."

That's what he said, but the idea of both of them going down together sent a spike of sick thrill straight to his fingertips, so he lifted the bottle to his mouth in hopes of numbing it before it could go any further. He couldn't drink much more, the bottle was nearing empty and his limit was fast approaching, he could feel the reigns he held on his anger slipping already as he dragged his thumb across his lips as if he could wipe the alcohol out of his system.

"Ninety percent of the time I want to carve the skin from your body and hang it out as a warning to every other fool who thinks he can stand in my way."

It wasn't exactly the truth, but it wasn't a lie either.

 

_I hate you so much._

 

“What about the other ten?" Neil asked, ignoring the fact that Andrew had admitted to premeditating his murder as he flicked his ashes over the edge of the building.

He suspected that Neil already had an idea what the other ten was like. The other ten was actually Andrew's worst nightmare. The other ten proved that Neil had done more than just getting under his skin by worming his way into what Andrew had believed to be his cold and lifeless heart to become something that Andrew actually cared about. The other ten was problematic. The other ten made him burn with fear and anger and everything else that he was too afraid to face.

 

_The other ten you make me understand poetry._

  
  


Even so, Andrew would not allow himself to forget why he was angry with Neil. He could still feel the control Neil knew he had closing around his neck like the collar it was and it only fueled his anger further.

  
  


"I warned you not to put a leash on me."

"I didn't. You put that leash on yourself when you told me to stay no matter what. Don't be mad at me because I was smart enough to pick up the other end of it."

Neil had a point, and again Andrew was left to wonder who the hell the man sitting beside him really was to be smart enough to realize that. It had stopped being a game a long time ago, but now it felt dangerous.

 

_Just who are you, Nathaniel Abram? And what do you want from me?_

  
  


"If you pull it again, I will kill you."

"Maybe when the year is up, you will. Right now, there's not a whole lot you can do about it so don't waste our time threatening me."

Defiance radiated from Neil right along with those words, and for a moment Andrew was absolutely stunned. Violent threats of murder were being met by a bored gaze and absolute trust, which left only one weapon.

Neil's past.

Through all his bravado, Neil was still afraid. He had to be. Andrew refused to believe that Neil trusted him so blindly. But time and time again Neil had only confirmed how stupid he was by doing things that made Andrew wonder if his will to survive had been some sort of extravagant lie. No matter how hard he tried to scare Neil, he never flinched. Even when Andrew was scaring himself by the sheer honesty in some of his claims. Right now, Andrew needed to hurt Neil. He just needed to prove to both himself and Neil that he could, because feeling weak in his presence was not suiting Andrew at all.

"I don't think it was the money," Andrew said finally. Neil tilted his head toward Andrew, his eyes narrowed in silent question. "Why they chased you so long.” He paused to take a drag off his own cigarette and blow the smoke out in a long, dragon-like puff. “I imagine at some point they realized it was far more important to hurt you than to recoup anything they lost."

He watched Neil's face, satisfied in advance with how that comment would cut, but Neil just flicked his ashes over the edge of the building before answering.

"So you say, but you still won't hit me."

A growl rose up in Andrew's throat and he almost forgot to silence it as he ground his cigarette on the edge of the building in that arms distance between them.

"The time is fast approaching." He fought hard to keep from gritting his teeth as he said it, but the words, though coming out even and unfeeling, felt clipped and short inside his chest. His fuse was shorter than ever but he couldn't afford to lose control again. Not right now.

Like he did when Andrew had first joined the group around the destroyed cars, Neil studied Andrew like he was something to be studied. An unsolved mystery, or some archaic text unearthed after centuries of being forgotten. Neil was searching Andrew and judging by his expression, he was coming up short again. Andrew didn't mind letting him look. Maybe Neil could figure him out and let him know why he hated the thing he wanted most. If Neil was any closer, perhaps Andrew would have reached out to him to pull him close, even if to simply threaten him again, but it had been Neil who put the distance between them and Andrew wasn't going to ignore that.

After what felt like forever, Neil leaned toward Andrew and said, "Good," Andrew felt his eyebrow twitch as he resisted the urge to let it rise and reached for the bottle to take his mind off of it when Neil finally continued. "I want to see you lose control."

Everything tilted again, and Andrew froze as he understood, finally, what Neil had been looking for the entire time.

  
  


_I don't remember asking him to do that._

  
  


But there he was, looking for the life, or more specifically, the anger. Reminding Andrew of the way his pulse felt when it raced under his fingertips. Giving him permission to be... Human. The desire to reach out to Neil got stronger, but so did his confusion. Neil needed to leave before Andrew gave in to impulse and did something he would regret.

"Last year you wanted to live. Now you seem hell-bent on wanting to get killed. If I felt like playing another round with you right now I would ask why the change of heart. As it stands, I've had enough of your stupidity for a week. Go back inside and bother the others now."

Neil's head tilted in exaggerated confusion as he stood.

"Am I bothering you?"

"Beyond the telling."

"Interesting. Last week you said nothing gets under your skin."

 

_Only a nothing like you can._

 

Andrew didn't know how to respond in a way that wouldn't be self incriminating, so he remained silent and listened to Neil's footsteps as they got further away. Relief and fear warred on inside his chest as he heard the door close behind him. Once Neil was gone, Andrew let himself sink back onto the cold concrete of the roof and stared up at the blindingly blue sky.

  
  


~

  
  


The silence was thick when he finally went back down to the dorm with the empty bottle in search of food. Nicky was engulfed in one of the bean bag chairs and playing a video game, Kevin was at his desk, arms crossed and scowling as he watched Exy replays. He didn't see Aaron, but before Andrew could ask, Nicky pointed down the hall to the bedroom with nervous eyes, and shut off the gaming system.

Andrew stood in the doorway to the bedroom and flipped on the lights. Aaron was already in bed with his blankets drawn up over his head.

"Sulking over a car isn't very noble." Andrew said finally. He watched Aaron's shoulders tense before he flung the covers back.

"The car? Do you think I give a fuck about the car? I wasn't even allowed to drive it."

He stood in unimpressed silence. Aaron's face was contorted in such anger it was like looking in a mirror to his own soul. He couldn't help but notice his brother's red rimmed eyes and the hoarseness of his voice. "Tell your newest pet to stay out of my life."

"Pet?" Andrew crossed the room, grabbed his cigarettes from the top drawer of his dresser and leaned against it as he opened the window before lighting it. "You wouldn't mean Neil-"

"Of course I mean Neil! Do you know what he did?"

Andrew hummed and fixed a bored stare on Aaron as he continued, explaining that Katelyn was refusing to see Aaron until he and Andrew got counseling together. Andrew's hand went still before he could take even one drag of his cigarette. The cherry burned bright and the ashes threatened to fall to the carpet before Andrew could slow his thoughts. That was what Neil had done?

"Serves you right, I guess," he said slowly, flicking the ashes out the window. "She goes against our deal anyway."

Andrew hadn't thought that Aaron could look any angrier, but after that there was fire in his eyes.

"You have no right to say that anymore.” Aaron spat. “You're breaking the deal, too."

"Am I?"

"Aren't you?"

There was silence then, and they stared at each other. For the first time since they met, Andrew felt like maybe he had underestimated Aaron and how observant he was.

"What if I said no?"

"You'd be lying."

"About the counseling."

The fight left Aaron all at once. He deflated like a balloon.

"Andrew, please..."

"Don't. Say. That. Word." Andrew said through grit teeth. All it took was that one word to turn his entire body to ice. It didn't matter who said it, or why, it always sent him reeling through his memories.

"I need her, Andrew. She's all I have."

Pins and needles rocketed up Andrew's fingertips and all the way through his arms. Andrew didn't bother correcting Aaron. If he didn't feel like he had anyone else... fine. It wasn't as if Aaron had ever been there for Andrew, considering him something he “had” would be foolish. However, after all he had done so Aaron never had to be alone, hearing him say it out loud and to his face stung.

"Have you fallen so low?" Andrew asked, putting a mocking lilt into his voice. "I bet all she had to do was ask and you fell to your knees and agreed."

Aaron laughed at that. A cruel, mocking laugh that made the hair on Andrew's arms stand. That must have been how he sounded back when he was on the drugs.

"As if you're any different. Neil's had you wrapped around his finger since day one."

Andrew didn't know how to respond. So he didn't.

"That's what I thought," Aaron scoffed. "you know what, until you agree, you're dead to me. I'm sick of losing things because of you."

Andrew had never once raised his hand at his brother, not once, but doing that now was hard. How dare Aaron not realize that Andrew had lost things because of him as well. Words he could hurl at him buzzed around in his head so fast and furious they quickly became static. An annoying background buzz in his mind. Andrew had murdered Aaron's mother upholding a promise to protect him when he refused to protect himself... He'd taken the bruises from Aaron's face and arms, he'd taken Aaron's anxiety, taken his drug addiction, opened up a better life for him. Yet, Aaron still chose to resent him without realizing what Andrew had sacrificed. If only he knew what Andrew had sacrificed just so a pervert would stop whispering Aaron's name.

Andrew left the room without a word. Dead people did not speak.

  
  


~

  
  


Sunday brought more vandalism, but this time the only damage done was to campus property. It didn't come as a surprise to Andrew that they struck the campus. Not a single one of the Foxes had anything valuable left to destroy, so the vandals had decided to go for the last thing they had left: their home.

It was disturbing how deeply the Ravens' fans understood everything the Raven's themselves were about. Andrew had to wonder, especially after seeing the dead fox, if both of the vandalisms had been orchestrated by Riko Moriyama himself. The vandalism didn't piss the Foxes off nearly as bad as the statement the Raven's coach, Tetsuji Moriyama, released did though. He likened the Foxes to stupid dogs and made it seem like it was the Raven's job to train them. Andrew was amused by the analogy. The Foxes had always been known for their unruly behavior. If it was the Ravens' job to train them, they were doing a piss poor job, and always had.

Monday came peacefully, or about as peacefully as it could with the way war seemed to bleed off of all the Foxes. Aaron especially, who, true to his word looked right over Andrew like he didn't even exist. Though, that wasn't very different from a regular day, the only difference had been the way Aaron skirted him and sent nasty glares when he thought Andrew wasn't looking. Kevin hadn't helped either, bitching about how the team was falling apart before his very eyes. Again, Andrew had to agree. There was no way they were going to win any games, let alone a final, the way they were.

 

~

 

“Andrew,” On Wednesday, Neil pulled Andrew aside after practice. They stayed behind while the rest of the Foxes trudged inside. “Have you heard back from the shop?”

He had, and the news was not something he was ready to talk about. He'd known the second he saw the car that he would be receiving that call, but it hadn't made him any more ready for it. While Neil listened to the message, Andrew climbed wordlessly up on the trunk of the rental and fished around in his pocket for his cigarettes. It was an awful piece of junk, but it was freedom. With keys in his pocket he no longer felt trapped at Fox Tower, but the rental wouldn't last forever, and they still didn't have money for a replacement. Neil's face seemed to register the same thought as Andrew lit two of the cigarettes and handed one to Neil in return for his phone. Neil used his hand to protect the cigarette from the breeze and for a moment, Andrew wondered if Neil was sexy when he smoked on purpose.

“You're going to have to replace it,” Neil continued. “If the insurance company won't cover a replacement for your car, take the difference from me. You know I have enough for it.”

“I'm uninterested in your charity.” He said, flicking his cigarette off to the side.

“It isn't charity. It's revenge. It wasn't my money in the first place, remember? I told you my father skimmed it from the Moriyamas. If you take some to replace your car, you're making Riko replace what his fans destroyed.”

“Revenge is a motivator for the weak-willed.”

“If you believed that you wouldn't be planning how to kill Proust.”

Just the sound of that bastard's name made Andrew's stomach coil in on itself. Neil should have known better than to ever utter it again, but since he didn't, Andrew grabbed the back Neil's neck. Very similarly to the way he had grabbed Allison's. The only difference was now he knew that his anger was misdirected, but it didn't stop the way his hand closed around Neil's neck with small tufts of his hair trapped inside his fist. He pulled Neil in so close he could feel the warmth that rose from Neil's skin across his face and released the smoke he had been holding in directly into Neil's.

“This is not revenge,” He breathed. “I warned him what I would do to him if he touched me. This is me keeping my word.”

Where anyone else would hold fear in their eyes at these sort of actions, Andrew saw only understanding pass through Neil's. It was such a relief and at the same time it was like a thorn in his side. Just for one second Andrew needed Neil to lack something that he desperately needed. Anything Andrew could grasp onto long enough to push Neil away.

He let go of Neil's neck and brought his cigarette to his lips, but before he could take a drag, Neil took it from him and broke the fragile stick in two. It landed on the gravel and the lit end smoldered until it was nothing but a pile of ash. When the other end had rolled away, taken by the wind, Andrew turned on Neil. He knew exactly what Neil was doing. It had gotten to a point where it was fun to watch him try.

Neil was trying to provoke Andrew. He wanted to see him lose control. To see him get angry.

 

_I hate you so much._

 

“Ninety-one percent,”

“Just take the money. You bought the last car with someone's death. You can buy this one with someone's life—My life. That money was going to buy me my next name when I ran away from here. Thanks to you I don't need it anymore.”

The relief that flooded through him at that was an unwelcome thing. Andrew hadn't realized how ingrained the fear of waking up one day to find that Neil had run again had become. For the first time since he made Neil promise to stay Andrew believed that he would. Even if he refused to take the money.

“Your life has a price tag you are already paying,” Andrew said. Relieved as he may have been, Andrew couldn't change his stripes. He wasn't going to accept Neil's money easily. “You cannot barter away the same thing twice.”

“You've lost the right to call me difficult.” Neil scoffed. Andrew had to agree. The two of them could move mountains with their bullheadedness separately. Together, they would make one hell of a team during the apocalypse. He shrugged before Neil continued. He'd never agree to losing anything out loud. “Make a new deal with me.”

Andrew craned his neck to look up at the sky. The clouds were moving, but one could only tell if they really focused, after that it was hard to believe that they had ever looked stationary at all. Watching them as they slid across the expanse of sky, so blue it was rivaled only by Neil's eyes, helped him think clearly about what Neil was offering. Taking the money to buy a new car would be wise. Andrew needed a car, and without that money, Neil couldn't run as easily as he could have before, but he couldn't take it without giving anything in return. That wasn't how Andrew's deals worked.

“What would you take for it?” He asked.

“What would you give me?” Neil countered.

 

_Everything._

  
  


“Don't ask questions you already know the answer to.”

Andrew watched the incomprehension as it bloomed on Neil's face in the form of a frown. He was such an idiot. Had he really not realized by now that Aaron was right? Anything Neil asked of him he would do. It was a dangerous place for Andrew to be. He had no control here, even if Neil thought he did.

He held his hand out, palm up, between the two of them. At first, Andrew hadn't decided what he wanted to do. He was caught between wanting to pull Neil in again and wanting to hit him for making Andrew want to pull him in again. Instead, at Neil's confusion (an expression Neil wore far too often) he had him hold out his hand. He brushed his fingered along Neil's knuckles as he stole his cigarette. It was a selfish touch disguised as a selfish move, almost as selfish as it was when he propped the cigarette between his lips and brought it back to life with a breath that he would never admit was a sigh.

“That was mine,” Neil said, but he didn't sound bothered by the fact that Andrew had taken it.

“Oh,” Andrew replied as he blew the smoke out at the sky. He was still waiting for Neil to decide what he would take for the money, but Neil seemed to be content watching him smoke his stolen cigarette. Andrew only hoped that he wouldn't ask for something impossible, like to get along better with the team.

“I want you to stop taking cracker dust.”

He had not seen that coming.

“And he says it isn't a righteous streak.” He hummed. Whatever it was Neil was getting at was lost on Andrew. Was this about health?

“If it was righteousness I'd ask you to give up smoking and drinking, too. I'm only asking for this one thing. It doesn't have any effect on you anyway and it's an unnecessary risk. You don't need a third addiction.”

“I don't _need_ anything,” When had those words begun tasting like a lie?

“If you don't need it, it'll be easy to give it up, right?”

Andrew paused and stared at the blacktop just beneath his feet, if only to make sure that the world still stood still. How did Neil do that?

He turned the entire conversation into something different without even seeming like he meant to. It was a tactic Andrew knew well, because he had used it himself. The fact that Neil was fluent in that sort of manipulation to the point where he could make it seem so effortless... it should have made Andrew want to run, but it didn't. It only enthralled him further and pissed him off in the same breath, so he flicked his cigarette butt at Neil and watched as it bounced off and landed on the blacktop where Neil crushed it. Andrew hadn't waited to see Neil's reaction. He went back to staring at the sky.

“I'm going to take your temper tantrum as a yes. I'll bring the money by your room tonight.”

This caught Andrew's attention again. Neil was officially barred from Andrew's room, by order of Aaron.

“Will you?” Andrew asked, focusing a heavy gaze on Neil. “Rather, can you? Aaron doesn't want you in the room anymore, Nicky says. Something about inviting yourself to fights that aren't your concern?”

He had to keep a tight hold on the irritation that started rising up in his throat again. Neil had commandeered the conversation to where it was, and now all Andrew could think about was the fact that Neil had something to do with the fact that Aaron was no longer speaking to him.

Andrew had what several of his shrinks had called “control issues”. As much as Andrew knew that both everyone had their own separate lives, it drove him crazy not knowing what went on when he wasn't around. Knowing things was one of the best ways, aside from being strong, to gain an upper hand in any situation, so he had learned to make it his business to know everything.

He'd gotten the summary of this situation with Aaron's whore, several times, from Nicky but it never satisfied him because Nicky hadn't been there for most of it either. All Nicky knew was what Aaron had told him, and Andrew knew very well that didn't mean he had told him everything. All Andrew knew was that Neil had talked to Katelyn and now she was refusing to see Aaron until he and Andrew got counseling together. What he didn't know was, why. Why had Neil decided that Aaron and Andrew getting counselling was important?

“This phone tag nonsense has left the message a little unclear. So perhaps you'll explain to my face why you're suddenly so interested in my brother's life.”

Neil didn't miss a beat when he said, “I'm not.”

“Without the lies.” His voice was calm, but he wanted to spit them at Neil now.

“I'm not,” He repeated. “I can't stand him, but we're out of time. I told you last October we can't make it to finals if we're a fractured mess. You two are holding us back. I had to start with one of you. Since everyone bets on Aaron and Katelyn, I thought he'd fight you for her.”

Exy. It was always about Exy. He'd be lying to himself if he didn't admit to the relief that sped through his veins.

“Wouldn't that be an interesting change of pace? See also: a waste of energy and effort. He might try, but he won't win.”

“You have to let him go.”

Andrew felt his fingertips tingle in response, so he knew it was true. A painful fact that he'd known for a long time. He had been running from the fear that Aaron would run the second Andrew cut his leash and never return for as long as he had acknowledged Aaron as his brother. That was why he couldn't let him go.

“Oh, do I?”

“You'll lose him if you don't. He'll keep pushing Katelyn away if you tell him to, but he'll resent you for it. He'll count down until graduation and when it comes you'll never see him again. You're not stupid. I know you can see it. Let him go now if you ever want him to come back.”

His mouth had gone dry. It hadn't occurred to him how well Neil had gotten to know him over the last year. Neil had figured out the only fear Andrew had that trumped his fear of heights. Hearing it like that put it above his head like knives held by delicate spiderwebs. It was only a matter of time before they all came crashing down on him. He was going to lose Aaron no matter what he did, which was why Andrew had held on so tightly at all. His irritation spiked again and he had to fight to keep his voice level.

“Who asked you?”

“You didn't have to. I'm volunteering my opinion.”

“Don't.” He snapped. What did Neil know? Neil didn't have any siblings, he didn't have any family at all. He was always ready to run, what would he know about hanging on to something? All he knew about any of this was that he wanted the team to be more like a team. He didn't know what it was like to feel the only thing he had, that belonged to him, wriggling out of his grasp. He didn't know what it was like to know that by holding on to it he was slowly suffocating it. He didn't know what it was like to realize that he was steadily turning into all the people he hated most. He didn't know what it was like to find himself unable to stop fighting even when he knew he was wrong. “Children should be seen and not heard.”

“Don't dismiss me for lying to you and then ignore me when I tell the truth.”

“This is not the truth,” Andrew argued. “Truth is irrefutable and untainted by bias.”

 

_I am such a hypocrite._

 

“Sunrise, Abram, death: these are truths. You can not judge a problem with your obsession goggles on and call it truth. You aren't fooling either of us.”

“If you ask for half the truth, you'll only get half the truth. It's your fault if you don't like the answers I give you, not mine. But as long as we're talking about obsession and Aaron's life, what are you going to do about his trial?”

 

_Don't you dare say it._

 

“She's going to be here for it, isn't she? Cass, I mean.” Neil said it, and just like that Andrew felt his control slip. Andrew was not ready to talk about this. Not with Neil, not with anyone. “You're going to have to face her.”

Andrew could not believe that Neil was bringing this up now... he really wasn't in the right state of mind to be thinking about Cass, or Richard, or Drake. He needed Neil to leave. Immediately.

“ _Seen and not heard_.”

As soon as the glass door of Fox tower closed, Andrew brought his fist down on the trunk of the car so hard that pain seared up his wrist and splintered off up into his elbow, but even that didn't stop the way his body was starting to shake. Andrew's anger always made him want to sabotage himself. Without the medication in his system he had to fight harder against that urge.

Especially now, so he sent two texts.

One to Wymack: _Sorry for the dent, coach_

And one to Renee: _Renee_

  
Renee responded immediately with a smiley face and, “ _I'll be there_.”

 

 


	11. Normal is an Illusion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you believe it? The real chapter 11 is HERE. It only took... 7 months for me to finish it but it's FINALLY FINISHED. I'm so excited to share it with you guys that when I finally finished putting the final touches on this chapter I screamed at my computer. It's exactly as weird as it sounds.
> 
> ENJOY~

The sun had already started rising. Just enough to turn the sky a cold, dusky blue. The light that managed to filter in painted the room the same sleepy shade of dawn. Exhaustion was dragging Andrew through ditches, so he knew it wasn’t the fear of nightmares that kept him awake this time. From the aches that splintered through his body from sparring with Renee to the remnants of his last conversation with Neil, Andrew’s mind simply had better places to be. No matter how much he wanted to he just couldn’t seem to relinquish the control of his consciousness.

 

It was January 19th, a Friday morning otherwise known as Game Day. That evening, the Palmetto Foxes would go head to head against the Belmonte Terrapins. With the back of his hand, Andrew stifled yet another yawn and rolled his body to face the wall. Physically, he would have been better able to relax like that, but the prickles of anxiety of his exposed back had already started stabbing into his shoulder blades and making the hairs on the back of his neck raise in apprehension. He rolled over again, this time he placed his back so close to the wall he could feel the bumps in the paint catching on his t-shirt. He took comfort in the feeling, but his body was now more wound than it had been before and sleep felt even more elusive than it had before.

 

With an hour and roughly forty-five minutes before his alarm was set to go off, he decided to try an exercise that Bee had told him about. She had told him to close his eyes and focus on his breathing. “Count each one with a rhythm,” She had said.

 

In and out.

One and two.

Slow and steady.

Three and four.

Rise and fall.

Five and six.

 

There had been a part two to the exercise but his exhaustion was already taking him. His thoughts started to cloud and he found himself having trouble remembering the last number he had reached. He made a hazy mental note, just before he fell off the ledge of consciousness, to bring Bee some of her favorite cocoa as thanks. Just not the hazelnut stuff. That flavor now left a bad taste in his mouth.

 

An hour later and a half later, his alarm was shrilling in his ear. It was time to get up for classes and morning practice. He dallied with the consequences of skipping both for a moment as he lay with his arm draped over his eyes. The sun was shining with full force now and it was perfectly content trying to sear hellfire into whatever lie in its way. He prefered that it not be his retinas, but now it worked on burning its way through his arm.

 

After a few minutes of listening to Kevin and Nicky fighting over the bathroom he dragged himself out of bed, motivated purely by necessity. If he ended up benched he would never hear the end of Kevin's bitching and he wasn’t allowed to stab Kevin on game days anymore (by order of Abby).

 

The Foxes always left Fox Tower as a unit. Neil, Nicky and Andrew took the elevator down while the rest opted to take the stairs. When the doors opened on the first floor, Neil waited until Nicky had left the elevator to hand Andrew a heavy envelope.

Neil must have taken it to heart when Andrew told Neil that Aaron had banned him from their room.

“You know, this means you really have to stay.” Andrew said placing his foot in front of the elevator door and thumbing nonchalantly through the money before slipping it into his pocket. Neil was giving him a ridiculous amount, it would have cost less than he was holding to repair the old car.

“I told you I would, didn’t I?” Neil countered, he was keeping his voice low despite the fact that the others were already outside. Andrew hated that he loved the way it made Neil sound.

“I can never tell where the truth starts and stops with you. So I wasn’t really sure.” Andrew said with a shrug and took a step forward so the elevator door started to close before Neil had gotten out. A quick hand from Neil stopped it again and he stepped out.

“As long as you’re here, I have no need to run anymore. You’re my insurance.” The confidence Neil placed in him was foolish.

“It’s that cocky attitude that’s going to get you killed.”

 

~

 

A miracle was what it would take for the Foxes to win this game as scattered as they were. Just short of a miracle, on Wednesday, Neil and Kevin had started talking again. Andrew attributed it to the fact that they were both junkies and we're the only person they each felt understood the game the way they did. The upperclassmen were still nursing their anger at Andrew for his display of violence against Allison, but they were cooling off a lot more quickly than he’d expected.

 

Aaron was another story. True to his word, he continued to ignore Andrew like he had all week and wasted nothing when it came to making his anger at the rest of the Foxes known. Where Kevin and Neil were fire, he was ice. Thick, impenetrable and colder than the tundra itself. All day Andrew waited for Aaron to come again. To beg him to agree to the counseling. He told himself that if Aaron did, he would say yes as long as Bee was the counselor.

 

But Aaron never came. Andrew cursed the stubbornness that seemed to be a genetic trait, because that (and the desperate, dangerously leaning, shambles of his pride) prevented him from giving in. And then he cursed Aaron for never standing up for himself. Then he cursed himself again. For always acting in a way that made Aaron feel like he couldn't.

 

_I am despicable._

 

Despite his best efforts to focus on his lessons all he could seem to do was notice the ghosts of lessons past clinging to the chalkboard. The words he saw there mocked him.

 

_Tyrannical._

_Cruel._

_Rebellion._

 

Those words ran through his head all day. He did his best to ignore it, and continued his day in stony silence. Aaron's silence, however, was vastly louder. And it _hurt_. Andrew couldn't admit that he missed Aaron's presence beside him. He couldn't tell anyone how truly sorry he was. It would break down the wall that held up the image he'd sacrificed so much of himself to build. There was no way in hell that he’d let that sacrifice be in vain.

 

~

 

By the time he'd gotten to the locker room before first serve with the rest of the men, Andrew was in an awful mood. The weight of his anger and guilt sliced itself into the walls of his stomach, burning and cutting until bile rose up inside his throat with each breath he took too deeply. He told everyone that guilt and regret were useless but that didn’t stop them from being very real, uncontrollable things. Inside his each of his armbands a wickedly sharp blade spanned the length of his forearm. Their weight therapeutic for the way he could feel them, harmless through the fabric, but promising more. He wouldn’t, but he could. He’d stared at the gaudy orange locker until it flooded his vision, imagining what a neat slice across his wrist or thigh would feel like. His scars started to itch. He wouldn’t, but he definitely _could_ if he wanted to.

 

That was when it happened.

 

In that heartstopping moment, Andrew feared that he had failed. He could smell the blood, metallic and unnerving, before his vision cleared and he could again see the details on the lockers. When he turned around, the blood was pooling at Neil’s feet like an ugly nightmare turned reality. There was no telling where it started or ended, nor where it came from. It covered Neil, the locker, and was spreading rapidly across the floor to cover the bottom of Matt’s shoes.

 

When Neil pitched forward into his locker, Andrew had thought he was falling. All he could think as he crossed the locker room was,

 

_Not here. Not now. Not yet._

 

As he got closer, he saw the bag inside the locker. It swayed where it hung from the hook, and there was still blood pooled in the bottom of it. He also saw Neil struggling against Matt to get back in his locker to save his gear. His stomach bottomed out in relief as all the pieces clicked into place. Neil was fine, but his whole body thudded along with his frantic heart because, _what if he hadn’t been?_

Andrew realized in that moment that he could no longer run from the fact that Neil was important to him. The fact was upon him now, suffocating him with all the what nows.

 

“Nicky, get Coach.”

 

The blood was disgustingly thick, it must have begun to coagulate the moment it hit the air if not while it was still in the bag. He had to tread carefully as he got closer to Neil because the blood erased all of the traction his non-slip soles offered.

 

Neil was covered from head to toe and didn’t look much different than the dream vision of skinless Neil, whose screams still lingered in Andrew’s head. They haunted him now more now than ever. Andrew felt more broken than he had any right to, seeing Neil like that.

 

When Neil’s shock gave way to his anger, his face contorted into something awful. With the blood splattered across Neil’s cheeks, without his many masks concealing who he truly was, Andrew felt he was seeing Neil for the first time. The real Neil. He tried to punch the back of his locker. His body had moved so quickly, Andrew hadn’t had time to stop him. The bag did though. That wretched plastic bag that still held a tiny remnant of blood trapped in the bottom tangled around Neil’s fist. The blood spilled over Neil’s shoulders and even got in his hair as he made to throw it. However, this time, Andrew was able to catch Neil’s wrist before he was able. He used that moment to ease his heart and check Neil over for injuries. His heart wouldn’t believe it until his eyes did. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that the blood on Neil’s clothes had already started to dry, which meant there was no fresh source.

 

Andrew was not a religious man, but right then he thanked God in earnest.

 

Neil’s eyes cleared a bit when he saw Andrew.  

 

“It’s ruined,” Neil’s voice was raw in a way that let Andrew know that he was fighting tears. “It’s all ruined.” Andrew took the bag from Neil’s closed fist without a word. Nothing he could say would make Neil any less upset. He knew because he could feel Neil’s rapid pulse under his fingertips. It rivaled his own.

 

Coach Wymack came skidding into the locker room. Andrew didn’t know what Nicky had told him, but his jaw was set like he expected to find something much worse.

 

“Is that yours?” The fear in Wymack’s voice matched the fear in his eyes, but surely he must have known just as Andrew did, that if Neil had already lost that much blood there would be no way he’d be on his feet. The only thing Neil would be doing if the blood were his was laying in it.

 

“Coach, my gear,” Neil started. “It’s--”

 

“It’s not his.” Andrew said, dropping Neil’s wrist from where he had still held it above Neil’s head. Neil let it drop limply to his side. “He’s fine.”

 

Frustration prickled up his spine and he had to fight the urge to run his now blood cover hand over his face in attempt to ease it. How could Neil only think about his Exy gear? Andrew backed away while Neil argued with coach Wymack about peroxide and his “one-track mind”. That had been far too close. If that had been a rigged weapon… Andrew never would have had the time. Neil would have been dead before Andrew even had time to react. He was starting to understand what he was up against now, and the hesitation both Neil and Kevin had showed when he offered his protection slipped into clearer focus. To have called it a rude awakening would have been to put it lightly.

 

Could it really have been Riko’s doing? It would have made sense he supposed, but why only target Neil when so far the vandalisms had targeted the entire team? Something didn’t seem right… Unless it was a warning for Neil, something that would remind him of what scared him enough to keep his hair undyed and his contacts forgotten.

 

Andrew wished it had ended there, but it only got worse when Matt suddenly said, “What the hell?” from the far side of the locker room.

 

Neil’s eyes were intense as he crossed the room leaving bloody footprints in his wake. The color left Neil’s face when he joined Matt to stare at the far wall of the locker room. As soon as Andrew and Wymack stopped behind him and saw the message written on the wall, he understood why. One of Neil’s secrets was written on the wall in even more blood.

 

“ _ **Happy 19th Birthday, Jr.** _ ”

 

As far as Andrew and the rest of the Foxes had known Neil was supposed to turn twenty in March, but the “Jr.” suggested otherwise. “I _’m named after my father.”_ Neil had said once. And even if he hadn’t, the way his face blanched would have.

 

Usually Neil’s loose ends were like an annoying thorn in Andrew’s side. Like puzzle pieces that just didn’t quite fit together or a picture frame that sat off-kilter no matter how hard you tried to level it out, but this time it was bad. It was less of a thorn and more like a bullet that a doctor couldn’t seem to safely dislodge from a heart. Neil’s past seemed to be catching up with him. This though, Andrew didn’t know what to make of. Was this really Riko? Using scare tactics on Neil to keep him in line? To let him know that he’d finally figured out their connection to each other via their parents? Andrew had never been afraid of facing Riko when it came to Kevin because it had always seemed like Riko had a lot of rules he had to follow, but Andrew was doubting his ability to go head to head with him again. Who even knew where all the blood came from? And they could not forget that Riko had murdered Seth. For all Andrew knew Riko would kill them all to get Kevin and Neil back. The farther Riko’s displays went into depravity it felt a lot less likely that an entire life’s worth of pent up anger and frustration was going to be enough.

 

Neil stood in silence, his jaw clenched as though one wrong move would make him vomit. Andrew had to wonder if he was rethinking the money that was tucked safely in Andrew’s messenger bag. For a few moments, he also had to decide if he was comfortable keeping it. After all… Neil had said that it was originally going to buy his next name.

 

“I’m calling the police.” Wymack started and made to turn for the door, but Neil caught his elbow in a tight grip. So tight that Andrew saw Wymack wince.

 

“Coach,” It sounded like Neil was trying not to vomit the words. “You’re going to have to leave them out of this one. Okay? Let’s just get through the game. I’ll clean this up afterward. No one else has to know.”

 

Andrew had known that he’d not been lucky enough to get the full truth out of Neil yet, but he didn’t think there could possibly be that many secrets left. Yet here they all were, finding out that Neil wasn’t even the age they had thought he was…

It reminded Andrew of something he had said to Neil the year before.

 

_“I’m not a math problem.” Neil had said tersely. After Andrew had told him that his loose ends didn’t add up._

_“But I’ll still solve you.” That was the moment Neil became a challenge. Andrew watched him, memorized his habits, and eventually, offered him protection, but never had he gotten any closer to figuring Neil out._

 

He wondered now if that was even possible. Neil seemed to have buried himself under lie after lie, maybe Neil didn’t even know the truth anymore.

 

“Give me one good reason not to cancel the game and pull security in here.” Wymack said hotly, breaking Andrew out of his thoughts. Even though he wasn’t a fan of police, it sounded like an awful idea to just let this sort of thing go.

 

“I can’t give you that yet. I told you to wait until May.” Neil said quietly. Ah, so the truth really was still in there somewhere. Andrew had no idea what to make of any of the situation at hand. It was like trying to hold dry sand in a bucket full of holes. The more he thought he understood, the more it all escaped him. What was happening in May?

 

Neil had begun to scrub the bloody message off the tile. It came off surprisingly easy which left a nasty feeling in the pit on Andrew's stomach. Whoever had put that there had been inside the Foxhole Court and they hadn't been gone for long. He felt like he might actually vomit when he realized that the culprit had probably slipped into the crowd that was now flooding the stands. That they were probably still there.

 

The rest of the Fox men watched Neil helplessly, every single one of their faces stricken with disgust and confusion. Wymack's was dark. His eyes were fixated on Neil's shoulders as if he could bore the answers out of them by force.

 

“Neil,” Matt started, but Neil didn't let him finish.

“Change out, Matt.” Was all he said before walking back to the lockers. Andrew stayed by Wymack, waiting for him to get fed up with the game Neil was playing, but all Wymack did was turn to continue watching as Neil walked passed leaving more bloody footprints. When he was out of Neil's sight, Wymack rubbed the heel of his hand at his forehead. This was not an easy decision for him to make, and the set of his jaw suggested that he hated himself for the side he was about to take. When Neil turned back around to reach for Kevin's support, in French no less, Wymack dropped the arm to his side in frustration. Andrew could relate. It was incredibly hard to protect someone when they wouldn't tell you exactly what they needed protecting from or why.

 

Andrew didn't think there was any way Neil could convince Kevin to play while there was still fresh blood drying all over the locker room floor, however he turned and took turns looking each man in the eye before his gaze landed on Wymack and said, “Get moving. We have a game to win.”

 

“You're joking, you're really just going to ignore that this just happened? Neil, you look like a Carrie stunt double. You don't even want to get security up here while the scene's still fresh?” This was Matt. For the first time in the history of forever Andrew found himself agreeing with him.

 

“No,” Neil answered. “I don't.”

 

“You're joking.” Matt seemed to be the voice for everyone in the room at that moment.

 

“Riko is an egotist and an asshole. He wants us to react to this. If we do, he wins. Don't give him that satisfaction. Pretend this never happened and focus on the Terrapins.”

That seemed to be what it took to tip the scales enough for Wymack to make his decision.

 

“No one is changing in here. Get your gear and get out. You can have the girl's room when they're done with it.” He rounded on Neil. “I will give you _one_ chance tonight. If I think your head isn't in the game, I will pull you so hard you get whiplash and Dan will take your place. Do you understand me?”

 

“Yes, Coach.”

 

Wymack shook his head, he looked green as he scooped up Neil's clothes from the bloody pile on the floor.

“I'll get Abby cleaning this. Someone loan Neil another towel.” Neil thanked him, but he only growled, “Shut up.” and let the locker room door swing shut behind himself.

 

That was that then, Andrew guessed. They were opting for insanity. Andrew strode across the room, purposely stepping in the blood, and started unpacking his gear. The rest of the team took that as the signal and started filing out. Andrew followed, tracking the blood with him. He would be damned if he let anyone forget about what just happened so easily.

 

When the girls were done, the men piled into the girl's locker room. All except for Neil, who had stayed behind so as not to “track the blood any further than he had to”. It made Andrew uneasy to leave him alone, but he could also see where it would do Neil some good. If they really were going to play these games, Neil would need the time to clear his head.

 

The setup of the girl’s locker room was essentially the same as the boy’s but the girl’s locker room was like a mirror image and they had added their own special touches. There was a table filled with incense burners and scented candles near the door. It explained why the girl's locker room always smelled like they were baking every time their locker room door swung open. The men's locker room never smelled so good. Someone had bedazzled her name onto one of the lockers. That someone was Allison.

 

While the rest of the guys were marveling over it, Andrew dumped his gear on the bench in front of the lockers and started changing out in silence. He couldn't believe they were going to play. The team was fractured as is, proven further by the way Aaron pretended he hadn't been looking at Andrew when Andrew looked up.

 

~

 

Neil was late coming out to warm ups, but it gave Andrew an opportunity to scan the crowd without stressing him out any more than he had to. He scanned all the faces he could as he ran through drills, half expecting to see Riko and his goons up there again waiting to see the aftermath of their cruel joke. He wasn’t, which left a nasty feeling in Andrew’s gut that he wished he could ignore. Nothing about the incident felt right.

 

Despite all of it, the game went surprisingly well. Neil played with an extra aggression that got him yellow-carded before halftime, but Andrew only felt that it was to be expected.

 

During the second half, Aaron surprised Andrew by calling out to him after a Terrapin Striker managed to knock her way past him and was on her way to try to take the goal. Andrew deflected the ball as if it were nothing and nodded back at Aaron who turned to sneer at the Striker.

 

They took the game at eight-five and when they did, the Foxes brought their victory dance to Andrew’s goal. As they often did because Andrew failed to see how a win was a justification to make an ass out of themselves in front of a crowd. Last season he had no choice but to play along with the celebrations because since he had been so sick by the end of the game he couldn’t stand. Nicky seemed to have forgotten himself and looked ready to jump on him. He aimed his racquet as not only a warning, but a reminder of what Nicky definitely knew a heavy could do. Nicky then opted for the less violent twin.

 

“We cut it close tonight,” Kevin’s voice somehow reached him through the chaos of the cheering crowd and the screaming team not even three feet in front of both of them. “Too close, we almost lost this game. We scraped by barely. In order to be good enough for championships we need to do better. You need to do better.”

 

Andrew couldn’t be bothered with Kevin’s obsession. Neil’s had drained him before the game, and there was still blood drying on the locker room floor that continued to drain him further. He shooed Kevin away with the back of his hand and shouldered his racquet and made his way through the line of angry Terrapins so he could finally get out of the noisy stadium.

 

Andrew lead the line of Foxes back to the foyer, minus Matt, Dan and Nicky who volunteered for press duty. He heard Neil ask Wymack for a mop, to which Wymack told Neil to shut his face and reminded him that they had all just won the game.

 

“Eight-five,” Allison said tauntingly as she strolled past. She was swinging her racquet to and fro as she continued. “I guess you can consider that your birthday present from the team.”

 

“ _Allison!_ ” Renee admonished, but Allison jabbed a perfectly manicured finger in Renee’s face.

 

“ _No_ , I’ve hit the limit of what _bullshit_ I’ll tolerate this week, let alone this _year_. I need to know how much worse this pissing contest between Neil and Riko is going to get.” Allison snarled. Renee fell silent, probably because if anyone had the right to demand such a thing at this point, it was definitely Allison.

 

“We are going to talk about this, but not until everyone’s here.” Wymack said, stepping between the two girls as a preemptive measure. “Go get washed up, we’re going in turns again. Ladies first.” Wymack sighed deeply as soon as the swung shut behind the girls and continued. “I’m instating a new team rule where everyone is required to be happy after a win. You downers are going to suck the life out of me before my time.” He looked at each of them in turn, and out of the four left, only Andrew made eye contact. This time he threw his hands up in defeat and left the room, probably to go find the key to the drawer in his desk. The one that held the secret stash of booze. Only Kevin and Nicky had the energy to talk about Exy after that. Neil stayed silent. There was a far away look in his eyes that Andrew had seen a few times before. Neil was staving off a panic attack.

 

~

 

The tension that grew inside the room while everyone waited for Neil to finish getting washed up ended up thick enough that Andrew was sure he could cut it with one of his knives. They waited in silence, aside from Nicky, trying to be funny saying, “There aren’t any windows big enough for him to climb out of in there are there?” and “No, I’m serious. Shouldn’t someone go check on him to make sure he didn’t like, you know... Kill himself?”

 

“He won’t kill himself,” Was all Andrew said as he watched the clock. Andrew was confident in that fact. Neil’s will to live was strong, but he also knew that if Neil really wanted to run he would find a way to do so and be gone before they would even realize it.  They’d already seen him do it. Nicky’s first comment really hit a sensitive spot… It became all Andrew  could think about as the seconds ticked by. The windows here were bigger than the windows of the bathroom in Colombia. If Neil didn’t come out in the next five minutes, Andrew was going to assume he ran.The seconds ticked by like hours and Andrew worked through a series of different emotions in each of them most of which were just several different shades of anger because the longer it took, the easier it became to convince himself that Neil had never trusted Andrew’s ability to do what he said he would do.

 

But then Neil came out. His hair was still drenched and water dripped into his eyes as he took his place next to Andrew. Again, he wouldn’t meet anyone’s stares. Instead, Neil shook his damp hair out of his face, sending a few cold droplets of water to land on Andrew’s face, and fixed his eyes on the floor while he  waited for Wymack to start.

 

“First off,” Wymack began. “The massacred elephant in the room. Massacred _birds_ , rather. I called in a favor with the faculty and got Abby access to the microscopes in the science labs. We needed to make sure that wasn’t human blood.”

 

“That’s morbid,” Nicky said, breaking the silence that followed and causing Neil to flinch. It was subtle enough, Andrew didn’t think that anyone who hadn’t been sitting close enough to touch him would notice.

 

“But necessary considering who we’re dealing with.” Continued Wymack. “The last thing I want is to put you all at risk. The court is supposed to be a safe place for you. I have half a mind to install cameras in here in the public areas, but I won’t do that unless everyone agrees. If we do rig something up, the only ones who will see those tapes are the people in this room right now. I want people in our business about as much as you do. Which leads me to my second point: Neil asked us to leave the authorities out of this.” He paused and met each Foxes eyes. “I respect him enough to allow that, but it’s not up to just me. Are you going to be okay with that?”

 

There was a moment of silence between the eleven of them, Dan look first to Matt and then to Allison. Her question was unspoken, but anyone who was paying attention knew exactly what she was asking, even before she asked it outloud. Behind them, Abby’s lips tightened into a firm line.

 

“You’re really just going to let Riko get away with this?” It was an echo of what Matt had tried saying before the game, though perhaps she would have better luck than her boyfriend had.

 

“He wouldn’t have done this if he thought he would get caught, Neil answered.

 

“Maybe we can’t get _him,_ ” Matt leveled. “but we could get his middlemen. No one’s perfect. Everyone leaves a trail.”

 

Neil opened his mouth to reply, but Aaron, of all people, spoke first.

 

“You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, _Junior_?” Aaron’s face was twisted into something like sick amusement. Neil must have sensed it, because he finally looked up from the floor for a second. “They’ll never find proof that Riko was involved in this, but they’ll find you, right? Isn’t that what _this_ is all about?” He asked, waving his hand over his face. “Your looks, your languages, your lies-- you’re running from something or someone.”

 

The hair on Andrew’s arms stood on end, and beside him, Neil looked ready to pitch forward and hit the ground running. For a while, silence crushed the entire team. Aaron waited expectantly while the others simply waited for Neil’s response.

 

“You know,” Neil started after what felt like an eternity, his voice was trembling a bit. “I expected low blows and backstabbing from the Ravens. I thought the Foxes were better than that.” Aaron wore an awful sneer before he opened his mouth to speak again, but Neil cut him off before he could start. “No, don’t you dare take your issues with Andrew out on me. I know you’re mad at me for getting Katelyn involved, but you’re going to have to get over that.”

 

“You dragged her into my business. I’m dragging them into yours. Not as much fun when someone does it to you is it?” Again with that awful sneer. Andrew hated seeing it even more than he hated seeing Aaron happy without him.

 

“You are so stupid. I invited myself to your fight because I wanted to help you two.You’re doing this because you think it’s going to hurt me. There’s a pretty critical difference there. On the bright side, I was right about your chances,” Neil seemed ready to deliver an equal blow as he tilted his head to the side. It was only fair to let him, Aaron’s protection stopped at emotional blows anyway. “You do understand by now that your cowardice is what’s keeping you two apart, right?”

 

Inwardly, Andrew winced, but Aaron only said, “I am not a coward.”

 

“You’re a spineless asshole. You let the world happen to you and you don’t bother to fight back. You let other people dictate how you can live your life and who you can spend your time with. Remind me why you put up with your mother’s abuse for so long. Did you actually love her or were you just too afraid to walk away?”

 

A better brother would have stepped in there. Even Dan hissed Neil’s name in disapproval as if she had any idea that Aaron really had been too afraid to walk away and that he’d had every right to be because his entire life he had been conditioned to take the abuse he’d dealt with. While Andrew, who could have explained Aaron’s flaws in the way only a brother could, stayed silent.

 

“Fuck you,” Aaron spat. “I’m still waiting for an answer to my question.”

 

“And I’m still waiting for a thank you.” Neil took a second to glance at Andrew. “From both of you, to each other. You’re even now, aren’t you? So why can’t you just wipe the slate clean and start over? Why do you have to drag it out another three years when you can just fix it right now?”

 

Neil truly was a twisted being if he thought an equal body count on each side fixed their problems, and the darkness that flared inside of Aaron’s eyes when he caught onto what Neil was saying implied that his thoughts were aligning with Andrew’s for the very first time.

 

“You don’t know anything,” That darkness seeped into Aaron’s voice.

 

“You don’t want me to be right, because if I am, It’s your fault she’s dead.”

 

“No,” It was time for Andrew to finally step in. Somehow he got the feeling that Neil had lead the conversation here, just so Andrew would finally say these words out loud. “It is always going to be her fault.”

 

“She didn’t kill herself, Andrew.” Aaron said, fighting to keep his voice even. These were the first actual words that Aaron had said to him in over a week.

 

“I told her what would happen if she raised her hand again. She had no right to look so surprised.” Andrew said quietly. Around him, the tension in the room finally burst as both Matt and Wymack put his words together in order to make a picture. Andrew only wished they could see the one inside his head.

 

She truly had look surprised when he had grabbed the steering wheel of her small car and yanked it upward, sending the both of them careening into first the median, and then into oncoming traffic. The last words she would ever hear were, “ _I told you not to touch him again._ ”

 

Hesitantly, Aaron looked around the room, taking in all the wide eyes and disbelief before switching to German.

 

“That’s not why you did it, don’t lie to me.” Aaron said.

 

“She was nothing and no one to me, why else would I have killed her?” Andrew retorted.

 

Anger was building up inside of him, years of it. It didn’t take much to come to the conclusion that Aaron had always thought he killed their birth mother simply because he had _wanted_ to. The entire time, Aaron had thought his brother was a murderer by _choice_.

 

Aaron took even longer to realize that hadn’t really been the case.

 

“You wouldn’t even look at me. You wouldn’t say a word to me unless I said something first. I’m not psychic. How was I supposed to know?”

 

“Because I made you a promise,” It was getting harder to keep his ever present mask over his voice. He heard it crack over the word _promise_. “I did not forget it just because you chose not to believe me. I did what I said I would do and _fuck_ _you_ for expecting anything else.”

 

Andrew didn’t know what he had been expecting from Aaron, but the silence he received wasn’t it. After everything he had sacrificed for Aaron, even after he told him what his true motives had been… all Aaron thought he deserved was silence? Did he think a bowed head would fix all the wrongs? All the _hurt_ ? Andrew needed Aaron to _say something._ To understand for once that everything Andrew had done had been for him. Instead he kept his head bowed, and Andrew grew more restless by the second. He was slipping away.

 

The buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead grew louder and louder until their crackling hum was all he could hear. He imagined choking the life out of his brother right then and there. It wasn't until a hand bolted out of nowhere, Neil's hand, that he realized that he had lost his composure and been on the verge of another blackout

 

Just like that, he picked it back up. He had been trained to do this while he was in foster care, and Juvie. To fake neutrality as good behavior. He still wanted to lash out, but it would have to wait. He met Renee’s eyes with a silent question. She nodded solemnly.

 

“Is that all, Coach?” Neil asked, but to Andrew's ears it sounded far away underneath the rushing of adrenaline that had threatened to overtake him mere moments ago.

 

“No,” Allison snapped from somewhere. “As enlightening as this little diversion was, it doesn’t answer the original question.”

 

Andrew heard everything of course, but it was all through the blanketing fog of self control. Now, Andrew was inside of himself; pulling strings in places deep within, turning off emotions where he could and pulling thick sheets of nonchalance over the ones he could not. It was harder than usual. Aaron’s head remained bowed while Neil and the rest of the team talked about his questions, yet he never once raised his head. A symbol of defeat. A symbol of submission.

 

A symbol of everything Andrew had never wanted for his brother.

 

By the time Coach Wymack finally said the words, “Dismissed. Drive safe.” Andrew felt so sick to his stomach, it was a wonder he didn’t vomit from the sheer effort of standing up.

 

The parking lot looked like a rave gone wrong. Bottles of assorted alcohols rolled across the pavement and the air reeked of beer and sweat soaked fans. The security guards cleared a path through the crowd and kept a watchful eye, but even that didn’t stop some of the Belmont fans from jeering and throwing trash. Matt and Dan led the way followed not only by Allison and Renee, but Aaron as well.

 

Even after all of that, Aaron still didn’t fucking get it. Andrew supposed he was the one who had no right to be surprised this time.

 

“Wait- Aaron we’re right-” Nicky started, but Andrew didn’t want to hear it.

 

A swift flick of his wrist Andrew held his lighter in Nicky’s face. The flame dance dangerously close to his nose. An inch more and Nicky would have been burned. A normal person would have said, “Just let him go.” but Andrew had never been that person, and now he was too angry and hurt to even _want_ to be that person.

 

When Andrew got into the car he basked in the fact that everyone feared him, in the fact that now they knew how right it was to fear him. Because now, they knew what he was truly capable of. It felt like power, and at that moment he needed every ounce he felt he could get because he could feel the vulnerability under his skin, pulsing like panic.

They feared him, and it was a damn good thing, because he was forgetting quickly how to fear himself.

 

Except Neil, of course. Who had known what he was capable of the entire time and still managed to look at him and say, “I’m not afraid.” Who took his fears and turned them into life. Who placed Andrew’s hands on his scars and asked for his trust before rushing into danger’s den.

 

The second he turned on the car, he turned the volume knob as far to the left as it would go. He’d rather blow the speakers than hear anyone in the car talk. He didn’t want to think about the way it felt to know that while he was pushing everyone else away that he trusted Neil to stay. When the bass hit the entire car shook and it rendered the rearview mirror useless. He felt the music inside his chest cavity and was sure the rest of them did too. It felt good to feel his heart that way. It reminded him that it was still there.

 

Traffic was slow, which didn’t help his mood any but the music, which exploded from the speakers every time a new song started, helped him keep his anger in check. He’d already lost control of it too many times. Any more and he would be looking at another court ordered prescription.

 

Aaron was gone when they’d gotten back to the dorm room. Nicky made the observation that he’d taken some clothes, his backpack, and his toothbrush.

 

The monster inside of Andrew, the one that had been pushing his brother away since day one, was glad.

 

 _Good riddance_ , it thought.

 

But Andrew, and the shred of humanity that was still left inside him was worried. A college campus on a Friday night made finding drugs easy. In Aaron's position, Andrew would go looking for alcohol, but Aaron wasn't a very heavy drinker.

 

_Don’t do anything stupid._

 

Inside his pocket, his phone buzzed with a text.

 

 _“Do you still need me?”_ It was Renee.

 

After mulling it over for a few minutes, Andrew texted Renee back.

 

“I _don't need anyone.”_

 

It was a lie, obviously, because after he closed out of his inbox, his thumb hovered over Neil’s number. He shoved his phone into his pocket without dialing. Neil’s phone probably wasn’t on anyway. He didn’t bother undressing from his street clothes before climbing into bed.

 

_~_

 

The sleeplessness from the night before was catching up to him like a greyhound on a rabbit. He never stood a chance. Andrew didn’t want to sleep, but his body demanded it. He kept hoping that he would hear the door open just so that he would know where Aaron was to the point that he would fall asleep and snap awake to the sound of the door slamming shut. But no one was ever there. It took three times of Andrew snapping out of a deep sleep to the phantom slamming in his head before he gave up and made his way to the roof with a bottle of whatever it was he had grabbed in the dark.

 

If he was normal he would call Aaron. He’d apologize.

 

But Andrew was only a monster so he sat on the rooftop, retreating into that place in his head where Neil knew him best and took all his cares away, until the sun rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry it took so long! Work takes up a good majority of my time, but I've been getting a little bit better at managing my time when I'm NOT at work so I should be able to get more writing done faster. I'm not saying it won't still take me a couple months to finish chapters, but it shouldn't be near literal years anymore. Thank you all so much for being so patient with me! I hope this chapter was worth the wait, the next one definitely will be. I'm so excited!  
> I hope you all have wonderful days/nights <3 
> 
> I get to go to get ready to go to work now lol


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